Not Tourists But Travelers
by Fericirea
Summary: 'In another life' Danny Archer and Maddy Bowen might have stood a fighting chance. But what if they had that chance in this one? And what hurdles might Africa throw in their path?
1. Mind's Eye

Mind's Eye

Closing his eyes, he's aware there'll be no opening them again. His mind dims slowly, and as it does, the boxes stacked in its darkest corners start coming alive. 'TIA' struggles and falls off the top of a stack and with an enormous shudder releases black, which is to say, a feeling of everything all at once in condensed form spreads through the labyrinths of his mind, toppling boxes with labels like 'Doesn't Matter' and 'Forgotten' and 'Later', and what slithers out of them is an overwhelming explosion of all things gone wrong in his miserable life. It hurts to breathe.

But there is Maddy. Sitting intrepidly on top of 'TIA', looking at him with her peculiar smile. He goes to her, feels her cheek against his palm, her fingers squeezing his, her hair brushing against him as she leans in and he can feel her breath on his lips. There is Maddy, staring boldly into his eyes as he takes her clothes off, one article at a time, savoring every moment. Maddy, throwing her head back, her mouth open just enough for him to see the tips of her teeth as he pulls her to himself and bends to taste her lips.

For the first time in his life, he's free to daydream – he is dying, after all. There will never be the consequence of facing disappointment.

/

Maddy slaps her laptop shut, relishing the sharp snap of it. Causing pain, even to inanimate objects, alleviates her own. She feels sad, she feels furious, she feels like the only thing that would make her feel better would be destroying Van de Kaap. Bringing him down, bleeding him out, leaving him for dead on a cliff.

And she wishes she'd never gone to Africa.

'The pen is mightier than the sword,' she whispers to convince herself that this story needs writing. Solomon is only days away from meeting up with Simmons and she has to pull herself together for it. For _him_.

Her phone rings and she brushes at the sting in her eyes before grabbing it off a coffee table. A quick glance at the number to save herself from talking to someone she wouldn't want to – and her heart stops. +881, the number starts. Like when Archer had called. The phone drops from her frozen hand and then again, as she fumbles to pick it up and by the time she flips it open, she is in so much panic the caller would hang up that she can't speak.

But neither does the caller. There is only a breath disguised by faint static.

'Hello,' she finally says, voice quivering. 'Hello?'

And then a clatter, a squeak, a voice and another one, bickering out of range. 'Hello,' she says again, 'Talk to me.'

More clattering, and at last she hears a woman's voice. 'Terribly sorry to disturb you, one of the children must've gotten in and was playing with the phone—'

Fury sweeps over Maddy. In her mind's eye 'the children' like vultures scavenging Archer's lifeless body. '_Where_. Did you get. This phone?'

'Once again, I am terribly sorry, I don't know how these phones work, perhaps a redial button and you were the last one our patient called. As I said—'

'W_hat_?'

'Listen, ma'am,' the voice on the other end is getting frazzled. 'It won't happen again.'

'No, you don't understand.' Maddy realizes she was digging her fingernails into her thigh and lifts her fingers, one by one. 'What do you mean, your patient? Who?'

'Well, to be honest, we haven't the slightest idea. He was found unconscious three days ago and has not regained consciousness yet. He's not doing too well, I'm afraid to say.'

'But he's alive? You're saying,' here her voice breaks, 'that Danny Archer is alive?'

'I can't confirm who he is, ma'am.'

'You know…you know. Tall, blonde,' the wheels in her mind spin madly. 'A watch with a blue dial plate on his left arm.'

'Yes,' the woman agrees. 'That would describe him.'

'Oh, God.' Maddy covers her mouth with her hand. For the second time within two minutes she cannot find her voice.

'Ma'am?'

'Yes, yes, I'm sorry. I'm just— I—I thought he's, uh… Where are you? Tell me how to find you.'

'I'm sorry, but travel is absolutely impossible in Sierra Leone at the time. From what I've heard, all foreigners have been evacuated. This country is at war with itself.'

'I am not a…regular traveler; the war is not a problem. Just please tell me where he is. I couldn't bear to know that…' She breaks off again and draws in a shaky breath.

The voice on the other end softens. 'I suppose… If you could get to the Bafi bank opposite Bendu, I could ask one of our local Kamajors to lead you. But it would be quite a walk.'

The last words spoken by the woman, a doctor named Helen Stranghof, are to gently remind her that Archer might not live to see her.

But Maddy is determined. And before dawn of that very day, she arranges for Fawaz to meet her in Conakry and squirms restlessly on a plane to Guinea.

/

Maddy clutches her backpack to her chest, as much for comfort as for certainty that the precious drugs inside are safe. Helen told her to bring as much pain relievers and antibiotics as she could get her hands on, and Maddy got her hands on a lot. She finds it sadly fascinating that Archer's very real wounds are being treated by a spiritual healer. If he is still alive. Maddy quickly chases that terrifying thought away and looks around again. She stands in the middle of nowhere, on a thin strip of tall grass between the river and the jungle, miles away from any large city, but what does that matter? The RUF are everywhere, there is not a riverbank that's not crawling with them. And if they saw Fawaz dipping his Cessna from the sky to land her…

That is something else Maddy does not want to think about. She's not one to scare easily, but standing alone, with no plan and no way back home is, at the very least, disconcerting. Minutes feel like hours and every rustle like an ambush. Wayward thoughts of all the ways in which this exploit might end in disaster flirt with her mind, and she is close to succumbing to her fears when the Kamajor noiselessly appears from the jungle. Not saying a word, he motions for her to follow and slipps right back into the foliage.

She has to jog to keep pace.


	2. God's Will

No amount of warnings could prepare Maddy for the sight when she follows Helen into the dim room where Archer lays, tossing restlessly on a low straw bed, his wrists bound by leather straps, his body tense, muscles straining under an invisible load. His hair is plastered to his face and every inch of bare skin gleams with tiny droplets of sweat – he looks like a dewy morning. A sheet is tangled at his feet and the bandages on his chest are stained a rusty red. Maddy breathes in shallowly, much alike Archer, as though afraid that the sickness in the sweetly purulent air might be catching.

She drops to her knees beside him and takes his fingers; her eyes search for any resemblance to the rough, mean Archer she knows, but this man trembles and shakes like a wounded child. She touches his cheek and he mumbles, tossing his head the other way. His skin is searing, and she is surprised a human body can support that sort of fever. Distantly, she remembers school, learning something about proteins denaturizing once a certain temperature threshold is crossed. She fears Archer might disintegrate before her very eyes.

'Let us pray the antibiotics will help,' Helen speaks while preparing an injection.

'Pray?' Maddy finds that to be the least reassuring way of solving problems.

'You must understand, the infection has become widespread. By this point there is only so much drugs can do and if the pathogens in his blood are killed all at once, that much toxic metabolites in the bloodstream could cause deadly complications that even a top hospital would have an uphill battle with. However, if we don't treat him, he will surely die. So you see, Maddy, we are balancing on the knife's edge here…'

'So.' Maddy presses her lips together. Runs her thumb over Archer's knuckles. 'You're saying he has a fifty-fifty chance of—of making it?'

'I am afraid the odds are not quite as good.' Helen sighs. 'It is God's will now.'

/

God's will is not something Maddy puts a lot of stock in, but Helen seems to base her life around it. It is God's will that she lives with the Temne in a tiny village of just a handful mud and clay houses, and it is God's will that she came to Africa. Her work is God's will as it was His will that pushed her to leave the comfort of her home in Germany and then _Médecins Sans Frontières, _months after arriving in Sierra Leone. And it is God's will the sun shines and God's will the hunter brings back game and fishermen – fish, and God's will that they pray every evening.

Helen insists for Maddy to join service, and while she complies and prays with everyone for good airs and good fortunes, she tries to leave as little room for God's will over Archer as she humanly can. She sits by his side patiently, wiping his face, forcing salt water between his cracked lips, whispering soothingly and stroking his arm as he struggles against his bonds, the words spilling from his mouth an incoherent mess of names and calls to invisible visitors. Sometimes, his eyes land on her and she sees a glimmer of recognition, sometimes he even opens his mouth to speak before melting back into delirium. She sleeps on a straw mat beside him when night comes, but it could hardly be called sleeping – just fitful dozing when weariness conquers worry.

And so she remains by Archer's side as he gets steadily worse, his delirium giving way to a comatose state – he lies limply and his chest rises and falls in short, jerky movements.

'I am afraid you look no better than our patient, Maddy Bowen,' says Helen on the morning of the third day. Concern emphasizes the lines around her eyes and the way she purses her lips makes Maddy think of her mother. 'What say you get some rest and I sit with him?'

But Maddy shakes her head stubbornly. 'I want to be here in case…' She leaves the sentence unfinished, unable to name the fear that gnaws at her heart. 'How much longer, do you think, until we know…that he'll be okay?'

'His fever breaking would be a most welcome sign. Until then…' Helen shrugs.

/

She jumps awake in the middle of the night, unsure of what had woken her, unease coiling in her intestines. Archer's body lies still and quiet, his skin a pale silver in the moonlight.

Maddy sits on her knees, afraid to touch him. 'Hey,' she whispers. Then, a little bit louder, 'Danny?'

'Archer, huh?'

The voice is barely more than a breath, and had she not seen his lips move and his eyelashes flutter, Maddy would think she's hallucinating. It'd be no surprise, after seventy two hours of no sleep. Holding her breath, she leans over him, extends her fingers to his forearm. For once it isn't slick with sweat and his skin isn't burning.

'Archer?' She whispers again.

But his eyes are closed. His chest rises and falls peacefully, gone is the ragged breathing she has become so accustomed to. It is this newfound silence that must have woken her.

Maddy falls asleep sitting by his bed, holding his index finger in her hand like the first time.

/

The first day that his fever breaks, Archer can hardly open his eyes and Maddy has to lift his head for a drink of water. Mostly he sleeps, and the few times he tries to ask her something, she brushes her fingers along his cheek and he turns to her cool palm like a sunflower to sun. 'Shh,' she says. 'Everything's okay. We'll talk once you have rested.'

And he closes his eyes and drifts off again.

That is the first night Maddy sleeps since returning to Sierra Leone. The next morning she finally remembers the task she had abandoned without a second thought. With that in mind, she takes the sat phone resting on a table and quietly steps outside.

Her eyes sweep over the morning bustle of the village: the men leaving with their nets and spears; the women waving them out and rushing about their morning tasks of washing up the children and shoving them out the doors; the children falling into little groups as they make a whole journey of walking a few yards to the building that serves as a church, a school, and a place for all formalities; Helen waving them in, patting the occasional head and lifting her head to smile at Maddy.

Maddy gives her a quick wave and punches in a number. After a few rings, she hears Solomon's voice on the line. She is relieved to find out his deal with Simmons went as planned and his family is set to arrive within days. Maddy's heart swells to hear the joy in his voce when he speaks of this fresh start. He confirms that her older sister had taken over the task of documenting the events as they unfold and promises to pass her Maddy's best. They exchange a few more words and she heads back inside.

Archer is still asleep. Maddy stands still with a hand on her hip for a minute, looking him over, then without further ado, pulls her notebook from her bag and settles with her back against Archer's bed. With a pleased sigh, she dives back into the thing that makes her whole – changing the world with her words. Time and place melt away as the story spills from her pen and every smooth line of ink is a wondrous new beginning, the creation of something which would otherwise never exist.

'Exploiting the mishappenings a failed smuggler, huh?' Archer's voice jolts her back to reality.

She turns around and smiles. 'On the contrary. Describing a rather miraculous journey.'

Archer's lips twist into a spiteful grimace. 'Ja, ja. Don't doubt the ending would've been different if I had any say in it.'

Maddy shrugs, choosing not to start an argument. 'I am glad to see you awake. How do you feel?'

'Like baboon shit, huh? How do you think?' He tries to lift himself on his elbows, but it's not a wise choice. His face contorted with pain, he falls back onto the pillow, breathing hard. Maddy touches the back of his wrist, torn by the feeling of helplessness. Roughly, he jerks his hand away.

'What the motherfucking hell,' he hisses between labored breaths.

Maddy tentatively touches his shoulder. 'It's been a week since you were hurt, Archer. And you were very sick… If it hadn't been for Helen…'

'Helen?'

'She's a doctor. A spiritual healer found you and brought you back here and they both did all they could to help you…'

He sneers. 'Remind me to kiss their hands and feet when I see them, a'right?'

'You know,' she snaps, 'you must be the most disagreeable person I have ever come into contact with.' And immediately regrets her words. The man has just narrowly escaped death, and there she is, berating him. 'I'm – I'm sorry.'

'Ja, don't sweat it. Won't be the first time I heard it, huh?'

A silence stretches between them. Maddy desperately tries to think of something to say and when she does, they speak at once.

'So, Solomon's doing well,' Maddy says just as Archer furrows his brows and asks, 'When you say 'here', where do you mean, exactly?'

'It's, ah… All I really know is that this place is not on the maps and a good eight hour walk from Bafi. No roads lead here, how strange is that?'

Archer lifts an eyebrow mockingly. 'And you call yourself a journalist, huh?'

'Well, forgive me for having more important things to do than run around writing down the village history! There are a lot of kids here. And other people who are trying to escape the war. I suppose Helen could explain, she seems to have a lot of say in how things are done. But I haven't talked to her much…'

Archer scoffs.

'What?'

'Can't imagine what kept you…' But his lashes kiss his cheeks and his words drift away.

/

If there is one thing that Archer despises, it is feeling incapable. And at the given moment, he feels like a cripple. He is not only too weak to get out of bed, but he can barely lift his arms, as he finds out when Helen visits him in the evening with a bowl of soup.

He is still having a hard time pulling his mind together and his thoughts play games with him, coming and going, making him feel he's missing something important. He's been shot and Solomon has the diamond. Solomon has the money and he has a bullet hole.

And the bullet, as Helen later explains to him.

Maddy is here. He has been shot. How would she know? Vaguely, he remembers telling her he wished she was there. But that's not something he would do so perhaps he had dreamt it. Or perhaps he was dreaming now.

'Danny.' Helen touches his arm and Archer realizes he's missed his mouth with the spoon.

He curses under his breath. 'Figured it can't get any more rancid in here, huh?'

Helen takes the bowl from his hands. 'What you need the most right now is rest. And your strength will return in due time.'

'Ja, ja,' he mutters. 'How about a smoke?'

She looks genuinely appalled. 'Smoking will kill you.'

Not before your kindly smile does, he thinks.

It is after Helen wishes him a good night and heads for the door that he realizes he still knows nothing.

'Wait,' he calls out and she comes back to his bedside. 'After I was shot, how did I get here?'

Helen gives him a look that says she's explained it before. But she smiles patiently. 'Our healer was out with the older children, collecting herbs when they heard gunfire. Once they ran up to you, they were certain you were as good as dead, but brought you back here, convinced that modern medicine can work miracles. However, I had run out of miracles a long time ago and if your girlfriend hadn't rushed over here wi—'

'What,' he snaps. 'What? My _what_?'

'Oh,' Helen chuckles. 'I saw no rings, so naturally I assumed you two aren't married, but—'

'What?' He expels his breath with such force it sends him into a coughing fit. The pain is exquisite. 'Married?' He wheezes out. '_Where_ have you been getting your information?'

Helen is silent until he catches his breath.

'She's a journalist; I am her story. A'right?'

'You owe her a mighty good story then, dear. I have not heard of many journalists who steal a bagful of antibiotics, fly into a war-ravaged country they have just escaped, trek thirty miles through jungle and spend the following three days waiting on a delirious man hand and foot just for a story.'

'Sure is committed, huh?'

And as Helen leaves he thinks it would have been much simpler to die.


	3. Teacup

As the sun is setting and the descending dusk makes writing impossible, Maddy lifts her strained eyes to see Helen observing her from the door. She tucks her pen into the notebook and approaches slowly.

'Perhaps a cup of tea?'

'I'd love to,' Maddy smiles and settles into a wicker rocking-chair as Helen brings out teacups and a kettle.

'Ah,' she sighs blissfully, 'tea is a delicacy now. It's no longer as simple as running off to Koidu for a refill.

'You are very isolated,' Maddy notes, holding the dainty cup in her hand, afraid that a click against her teeth might be enough to shatter it.

'Oh,' Helen chuckles, 'we like it that way. Do you know, I have not heard an angry word spoken in this village in, oh, I don't know how many years…'

'I meant you.'

Helen gives her an amazed stare. 'Goodness, you pity me!'

Maddy opens her mouth to deny the truth, but Helen waves her words away. 'Traipsing through the world is not for everyone, my dear! This place suits me just fine.'

'But you _must_ have done some traipsing to get here.'

'Such a long time ago,' Helen says, gazing somewhere far into the night. 'I must have been very lucky to find my place so early on.'

She is quiet for a little. Then her thoughts return to the present and she looks at Maddy again. 'Now, don't gape at me like that, dear! I am not a prisoner here. Whenever I miss civilization, I take a walk to Koidu and buy myself a vanilla cone. Believe me, I have never once been tempted to stay longer than it takes me to eat it.'

Maddy takes a very careful sip of her tea, finding the cup much more durable than she thought it to be. She looks at the woman in front of her curiously. 'How did you come to stay here?'

'That's a long story I have no intention of boring you with right now,' Helen smiles. 'Rather, I'd like to hear more about this Danny who's been causing us all so much concern.'

'He's, uh…' Maddy sips her tea and muses. How could she sum him up, when she hardly knows him? 'He's…complicated. I have never met anyone quite like him. Sure, most everyone lives by their own set of rules, but he's very dogmatic about some things. I suppose it was a means of survival. You can't always both prevail and be a good person.'

'And the two of you..?'

'We had an interesting few days caught up in the unrest. And in all likelihood that's all it was meant to be. Quite probably, if his exploit would have ended well… But now, who knows? There is so much about him…' Maddy breaks off, unsure of what she wants to say.

'These cups,' Helen lifts hers, 'were given to me by someone very special.' She keeps sipping tea as Maddy waits for her to continue in a baffled silence. When her cup is empty, she extends it to Maddy. 'Here, take a look at it.'

The cup is just like the one Maddy has been drinking from, but as she takes it in her hands she feels a certain roughness to it, a distortion of its perfect round shape. Looking at it closely, Maddy realizes it has been put together from many broken pieces. She runs her finger along the gently lopsided rim and looks at Helen questioningly.

'It slipped from my fingers once, and…' Helen spreads her hands. 'So I collected all the pieces, and still, some tiny ones I must have missed, I went to Koidu and bought myself glue, and I spent hours, my dear, hours bent over it, trying to piece it back together. And how many times a shard slipped and cut my finger. And how many times I gave up! I'd put it in a cabinet and take it out a few days later, I'd glue one piece at a time, but, oh, my dear, to know which piece! Which was the right one when they all looked the same? Goodness gracious, this was the most daunting task I have ever faced. But as you see.' She smiles and takes the cup back, holds it lovingly.

The ramblings of a lonely aging woman that interest no one. But Maddy is a gracious guest. 'What a tale for one cup to have.'

'A man is not a cup, my dear. You only get one try to put all the pieces back the right way and you can't store him in a cupboard when you're sick and tired. And the hardest part? You'll never know if you're finished.'

'…I don't understand.'

'All I'm saying is do you have that kind of patience?'

/

Sleep on demand is a hard art to master and a useful one to have. But the one absolute necessity for it is exhaustion and Archer has been doing nothing for far too long. He is not tired. Instead, he's angry at his lack of ways to avoid thinking.

He's back to square one. Even worse – square zero. His diamond is gone, his employer is dead, his connections will soon want _him_ dead, and he has nothing to show for it. No way off this side of the world. And even if there was – where would he go? The spreading unease is hard to shake – it grips the back of his throat like an anaphylactic reaction and shades in the peripheral vision of his thoughts until only one thing stands out and that one thing is fear. All he can see is what's wrong. Everything.

Very slowly, Archer draws in a deep breath and holds it as long as he can. One thing at a time, like always.

'Hey!'

His eyes fly open as Maddy bursts in. 'You'll never believe what I found.'

She's all smiles as she comes up to him. 'Come on, let's get you up.'

Archer doesn't share her enthusiasm. He winces sitting up. 'This better be worth it, huh.'

'Oh, trust me.'

She hooks his right arm over her shoulder and together they stand. Archer moves cautiously. His legs feel stiff and foreign and for the first few steps, he struggles not to stumble.

Maddy all but drags him out. At last, sees the place that has given him shelter. Leaning against the doorjamb, he catches his breath while his eyes wander over the village. It is barren in the mid-day heat, only a chance head of a child poking from one of the humble huts.

'Come on,' Maddy tugs at him. 'It's getting cold.'

He lifts his brows. 'What is, pray tell?'

She laughs. 'You'll see.'

They make their way across the central clearing and turn behind one of the huts – 'this is where Helen lives and that's where I am,' Maddy waves at a window – when he sees a tub.

'What the…?'

But Maddy is already unwrapping the bandages from his chest. 'Apparently Helen likes to treat herself to some civilization, so she had this built.' And when he gives her a reprehensive look, 'Relax, she said you'll be fine as long as you take care and keep your wound above water. And you really stink, Archer.'

He smirks. Maddy points to a bar of soap and a towel on a stool and turns to go. 'Give me a holler when you're done; I'll be inside.'

'Waiting at the window?' Archer's smirk grows into a crooked grin.

She glares, but there's laughter in her eyes. 'Don't worry; I have better things to do than peep at you.'

'It's not peeping if I know, huh.'

'Riiiight.' Maddy waves her hand indifferently and walks off.

She isn't even around the corner when he drops his pants. This is Africa – modesty is an extinct specimen.

Getting in the tub takes a while longer – lifting his leg over the edge proves to be harder than he recalls. But a deep breath and a sharp jolt of pain later, he plunges in. Bathing – what a luxury. Vaguely, he wonders if he's ever _been_ in a bath. A memory so distant it frays around the edges and dispels before taking shape fills him with a sleepy reprieve. He lifts his good arm over the side and leans back. The jungle chirps and chatters. A light breeze stirs his hair and creates a mysterious dance of sun and shadow on his face. His parched, filthy body relaxes in the lukewarm water. And for the moment, Danny Archer is simply pleased.

/

'Jesus, Archer,' Maddy catches up to him just before he reaches his cabin. 'Your pride will be the death of you.'

'Ja, ja. Either that or my greed, huh?'

He throws his towel across a chair and heads back out while Maddy gets fresh gauze.

'Hold on.' And he stands patiently, leaning on the doorjamb while she bandages him properly. Rivulets of water run down his neck and back, soaking into the gauze and tempting Maddy to grumble. But drying hair with one hand might not be that simple a task, thus she holds her tongue and goes inside to grab the towel.

When Maddy comes out, Archer is sitting on a step below the overhang, scraping at his beard with a hunting knife. She sits beside him and towels his hair, observing the tension in his arms and shoulders, the stiff way he holds his head, the fist with the knife, knuckles pallid. Touching him feels like patting a tiger – not something a wise woman would do. But Maddy has patted tigers.

She works her thumbs into his shoulders and slowly, he loosens up against her hands.

'You know, I never once thought of Africa as idyllic after I first arrived. But here…' she says and with much more agility than she thought he had, Archer shoots up and spins around to face her.

'What are you doing here?' His voice is rough, mean.

'I… What?'

'What are you doing here, Maddy?'

She is caught off guard. His face is still grayish and the dark circles under his eyes do him no favors, but his gaze is as determined as ever and his features deeper, grimmer than before. Every trace of weakness is gone, trodden into dirt along with his facial hair.

'When I spoke to Helen and found out you were alive… I had to do something.'

'Like write your story and change the world, huh?'

Still, she ignores the derogatory tone of his voice. 'You change the world one person at a time.'

'I didn't ask to be saved, huh? Huh, Maddy? I said I'll either get the pink or not come out. There was no third option, a'right?'

'Are you saying you'd rather be dead?' She narrows her eyes and tries to swallow her anger.

He just looks at her through furrowed brows.

Finally, she speaks again. 'If this is over the money, I am sure Solomon will cut you in on—'

'It's not about the fuckin' cash, a'right?'

She stands up, heels of hands against the small of her back. 'Then I don't understand.'

He thrusts his face to hers, eyes blazing, voice low. 'Let me return a favor, Maddy. If I'd had a choice, the diamond would've been mine and Solomon would've ended up in Conakry penniless. So why don't you get on a goddamn plane and go look for 'idyllic' somewhere nicer, huh. I'm not some damn hero to be played nice with and waited on beck and call.'

'You know, Archer, if there's anyone here treating you differently, it's you. As though you are terrified of realizing you're not the fiend you have talked yourself into being.' She pauses, adds, 'you are just a man like any other when you're bleeding to death.'

'Shame I'm not all the time, huh,' he says quietly, brushing past her.

She doesn't follow him inside.


	4. The Start of Whatever

The village is silent, almost eerie in pale moonlight. Not a leaf stirs as Archer readjusts the strap of his AKM, and with one lingering glance over his shoulder melts into the jungle.

He moves carefully, keeping his back against the trees, peering in the darkness for a night watch, a ravine, a sleeping animal, anything that might bring notice to his flight. In his concentration not to be seen, he nearly stumbles over someone seeking the very same thing. A man, crouching in a cluster of palm bushes, almost invisible, almost immaterial. Archer freezes. But the man takes no notice, and Archer starts to back away. Just then, the man shifts, a stray beam of light stretching along the smooth metal surface of his machine gun, and Archer realizes this is no local taking a dump in the bushes.

Instinctively gripping his knife, he circles around until he is but a hand's reach away from the crouching man.

The man is leaning forward, one hand by his face. Quietly, he speaks. 'Affirmative. Moving in to scout his location. Over.'

And that is the very last sound to escape his lips.

Efficiently, Archer strips him of weapons and sits back on his heels. The mercenaries are aware of his location. He wipes his knife with the corner of his shirt. Hardly surprising. If anything, he had expected someone to go looking for him. You don't get to just fuck off on your merry way after murdering someone like the colonel. And yet. It should have taken longer to be pinpointed.

Being hunted is an exhausting pastime, one that becomes almost unbearable when the prey runs without direction. So for the first time since regaining consciousness, he thinks not of the mess he is in, but of the next course of action. And while he knows perfectly what that should be, he finds himself going in the opposite direction, back the way he came from, feeling much like a man walking straight into his doom and unable to stop.

He slips into the cabin at the corner of the village and navigates to what should be Maddy's room. The door comes ajar with a touch of his hand. In the dark depths he makes out a sleeping shape.

Maddy lies on her side, one hand under her cheek, smiling in peaceful slumber. A loose curl tumbles over her face. He reaches to brush it away, but draws his hand back.

'Hey,' he whispers. 'Maddy.'

She stirs, her lips part in a sigh and a flash of lust causes him to briefly forget his intentions.

He should leave. He should stand up, walk away without turning back.

'Maddy.' He shakes her shoulder, nothing tender in that act.

She sighs again and opens her eyes. Wide.

'Shhhh,' he holds a finger to his lips as she scrambles up, taking the sheet with her.

'What the hell?'

'Listen. How have you been talking with Solomon?'

Maddy scratches her temple. Blinks. 'Solomon? Seriously, you want to know about Solomon in the middle of the night?'

'Just humor me, huh?'

She graces him with a scorching look. 'I have been using your sat phone.'

'Goddamn it.' He's surprised they hadn't swooped in to annihilate every form of life within a five mile radius.

'Not as though you are the one paying for it.'

'Exactly, huh? The ones paying for it are the ones tracing it.'

'Oh.'

'Clever as you are, couldn't have thought of that, huh. I just ran into one of 'em in the jungle, so you take what you need and be quick about it. We're leaving.'

Maddy ruminates his words, confusion in her eyes. But then her face hardens. 'And what were _you_ doing in the jungle?'

'Hightailing it outta here,' she spits.

'Ja.'

'Then, go. It's only you they want. I can do without any additional survival camping.'

Archer turns his head away, gritting his jaw. He feels the muscles of his neck pull tight. It releases pressure, so when he looks back at her, he can speak calmly. 'They are not friendly people to begin with, and finding another one of theirs dead will only foul their moods further. When they enter the village, the only gift they'll be bearing is open fire.'

'You killed someone tonight.'

He stares at her incredulously. 'No. We had a friendly chat and then he lay down and slit his own throat. Get your things, Maddy.'

Finally, she listens. He watches her throw her few things into a bag and sweep her hair back.

'All right. I'll get Helen and she'll help us round up the rest of the village.'

He would prefer to think she's joking, because the other option makes him furious. 'We're not getting Helen. Or anyone else.'

And turns to the door, his bad side away from her as he presses his palm against it. But Maddy doesn't follow.

'These people saved your life,' she whispers desperately, and when he doesn't respond, 'We can't let everyone just _die_. We can't bring the war here, too…'

He looks at her, tries to think of something to say, but words trickle away like the time he is losing, has been losing, since the moment he turned the wrong way. Instead, he spreads his hands in an empty gesture and walks out.

/

Courage drains from her like water from a colander and all that remains is gritty fear. For a short moment, it is all she can do not to cry. And that is not like her and she _knows_ it is not like her. Maddy Bowen doesn't get scared like a little girl. This is no different from any of the other times she faced imminent death. Only this time, she feels betrayed.

Helen sits up as soon as Maddy enters. 'What is going on?'

Maddy shakes her head. 'Archer was here.'

'So I heard. I presume he is leaving?'

'He is. He has. He said…' Maddy presses her lips together, searching for the best way to tell someone the home she's lived in for so many years might soon be destroyed. 'Archer was involved with the E.O. mercenaries. They were the ones who shot him, and I'm afraid they're coming back to finish the job.'

'Dear, they will never find us—'

'They already have and from what he's said, they are on their way. We have to warn the village, Helen. Everyone must leave.'

'Let them come! We have nothing to hide, and Danny has left.'

Maddy drops to the bed beside Helen. 'They are not people to be reasoned with… Even from what little I saw of them, I assure you, they are the type to shoot first and ask questions later.'

'So seems to be the modern fashion…' Helen murmurs. 'When will they be here?'

'I – I don't know. Soon. Archer left in a damn rush.'

'Then we better get this done, dear. I will tell everyone to go to a neighboring village until the danger has passed.'

Helen starts getting dressed when they hear a commotion outside. Both women exchange a fearful glance – are they too late? They trip over each other in their rush to run out, but stop short after throwing open the door.

The village men are warily forming a circle around Archer, who speaks in rapid Krio. His words are clear and deliberate; his tone leaves no room for consideration. The men look at each other, their voices a collective murmur of unease.

'I see we have underestimated our mercenary,' Helen observes. 'Wait here, dear.'

She joins Archer, and Maddy looks on.

Words are spoken, hands gestured and waved, hard looks exchanged. Then, grimly, the men separate to the women waiting by their homes, holding their babies. Quiet whispers lead to the hitching of skirts and the gathering of children and prized possesions, and one by one, the families start departing, each in a different direction.

The night sky has shifted to a vague shade of gray when the three remaining figures come together.

'What about us?'

Archer looks east. 'Guinea is a few days' walk away.'

'You two go ahead,' Helen says. 'I will stay here.'

Maddy stares at her, unbelieving. 'They will kill you.'

'Perhaps that is God's will,' Helen states calmly.

Archer scowls and starts pacing. His lips move, forming inaudible obscenities, as he pointedly glances at the lightening sky.

'God doesn't want people to get shot! Truly, Helen, if I didn't know you better, I'd think you have lost your mind!'

'And perhaps I have.' The corners of her lips curl in a small smile. 'A long time ago.'

Maddy looks at Archer for help, but he only glares, the muscle in his jaw jumping. 'Helen…'

'You go on, dear. I have been waiting for something to happen for a long time. This is it.'

Archer glances at his watch. 'Two hours ago would have been a good time to leave, huh?'

But Maddy ignores him. She looks at Helen. '_Why_?'

'There was a time when I was like you, my dear, I had to be everywhere, do everything, and, best of all, I had someone to do it with. We wouldn't go ten steps without each other. We were in Koidu when a guerilla war started. The shooting and screams woke us; we ran blindly into the jungle, and God led us here. We waited a few days for the unrest to pass and then he left to see what could be salvaged, to figure out a way for us to get home. I was pregnant then… He begged me to promise I will not leave before his return, and, you see, my dear, he never returned. This is a sign. It is time for me to go home.'

'Goddamn it.' Archer kicks a tree stump and storms off. 'I am leaving. _Now_.'

Maddy stands, torn between following him and persuading Helen, but the older woman just shakes her head. 'Go on.'

Then she turns around and walks off.

Maddy chases after Archer. 'We can't just _leave_ her.'

'Ja. I'll tie her up and you carry her.' He snaps without slowing.

Maddy keeps pace. 'She saved your life—'

'_That_'s getting a bit old, huh?'

At a loss, she grabs his wrist. 'Archer, _please_.'

He rips his hand away and the look on his face when he turns to her makes her jump back.

'Don't test my reflexes,' he growls. And without waiting for her to recover, stalks over to Helen.

'I know where Richard is, a'right?'

As a journalist, Maddy had long ago developed a sense for _moments_. And what happens next is one of those. Helen turns slowly, surprise and hope registering on her face. Her mouth moves emptily, as though trying to digest the information. Her fingers spread, and her breath catches. The world stops, just for a moment.

But Archer wastes no time kick starting it again. 'So get off your high horse and we move out.'

Helen swallows audibly. 'You are telling the truth?'

He glares at her. 'Do I look like I care enough to lie?'

/

They disappear below the canopy just as the first light colors the sky pink and the silence of early morning is shattered by the chop of a helicopter.


	5. Taking Chances

'You two head east,' Archer gives Maddy a little push in the right direction, 'and I'll catch up.'

Maddy opens her mouth to object but he silences her with a wave of hand. 'No time for that, huh. Just go.'

So, grudgingly, they set off.

Pushing past the undergrowth, Maddy glances over her shoulder as Archer moves noiselessly in the opposite direction.

/

Archer circles the empty village almost leisurely. Time is of essence; with every passing second the whirr of the 'copter grows louder. Any moment, and it'll drop into his view. But he is in no rush while lighting a dead man's cigarette. The calculated calm of his face is briefly broken by a smile when the smoke fills his lungs in a familiar rush of warmth. He surveys the sky and breathes out. Won't they be surprised.

He leans against a tree in the outskirts, takes another long drag, and crushes the cigarette with his heel the instant the helicopter appears over the clearing. The few seconds it hovers are enough for Archer to jump out from under his cover, fire a round of bullets at the back propeller and leap back to the tree without missing a beat. The wound in his side burns. Expelling his breath sharply, he surveys the damage. His fingers move nimbly up the gun, switching the setting between series and singles.

The Mi-6 quivers much like the wounded beast it is. Smoke pours from its tail. The whirring blades drown out the shouts of the men inside and from ground level they are panicked mimes on a wobbly stage. It takes them but ten seconds to make sense of the ambush and one by one, they drop over the side as the helicopter becomes harder to control. All had performed low-altitude landings in the training range and only a lucky few – under enemy fire. Those are the ones to land without bullets riddling their bodies. Archer shoots who he can in the air and breaks off in a run without looking behind as the first man hits the ground, ready to return fire before he finds his feet. The helicopter crash is a tiny earthquake under his boots.

Between the dangling vines, the thorny brambles, the gnarly roots and the thick undergrowth, one must not scare the monkeys or flush out the birds, step on snakes or stumble over warthogs and, all at the same time, remember to cover his tracks; but the ease with which Archer sweeps leaves and vines to one side while pointing the gun at the ground so as not to shred them with the muzzle, the way he jumps from root to mound of leaves while avoiding soft earth and animal nests, the way he keeps a sharp eye ahead, beneath and above while making almost no noise and leaving no discernable trail makes running through a jungle appear deceptively simple.

Even for a healthy man without a hole in his side that type of chase is a guarantee of fast exhaustion. Despite Archer's attempt to defy nature, it is not long before he loses his focus momentarily and that moment is enough. He stumbles over a low climbing vine and falls hard against a tree, knocking all breath out of his lungs. His vision dims as pain explodes in a brilliant flash and he drops to one knee, one hand sinking into the earth, the other clutching his searing side. The jungle is silent of any foreign noise. But he has no doubt they had seen the direction of his fire, had found the cigarette and empty shell casings and are tracking him as diligently as he is trying to lose them.

But there is only so much he is capable of, and for now all his vigor is spent. Pain is an exhausting bitch. He waits for his heart to stop racing before dragging himself up and continuing on his way. This time, slower. And the machine gun is assigned the role of a temporary staff.

/

Maddy is thankful for Helen's presence as the two women try to keep a steady course. Both had heard shots being fired and both had looked anxiously in their direction and both had turned their backs and walked on. No words were exchanged, no words seemed fitting. Trapped in an uncomfortable silence, chock full of unease, they glance at each other periodically, but neither speaks as they trudge through the jungle, taking detours to one side or the other, walking around fallen trees and impenetrable shrubbery, sometimes doubling back and sometimes falling into paths trodden by wild animals and the higher the sun rises, the more often and with growing anxiety Maddy glances over her shoulder. But time after time, Archer fails to materialize behind them.

'This is madness,' Maddy mutters.

'What is, dear?'

'This.' She switches her bag to another shoulder and slows her pace. 'This is madness. Of all the situations I have gotten myself into. This. Running through the wilderness. From who, to where?' She pauses. 'For_ what_?'

She glances at Helen and their eyes meet.

'To you, everything is either a story or it's not.' Helen observes.

Maddy wants to disagree, but there is too much truth in Helen's words. Her frustration grows. She had never let anything come above her work. She had flown out to Bangkok the day after the death of her fiancé's mother, she had hopped a bus to Lahore hours after depositing a friend in a Pakistani hospital, she had delivered an article despite her own illness, and in brash contradiction she had dropped everything for Archer. And now, because of him, the story of her lifetime is slipping away. Her story, _the_ story, one that she nearly risked her life for, is effectively disappearing along with the impact it could have on the world, while she flees for her life for crimes she never committed.

'It is my job,' she says, 'to find a story. I can open ignorant eyes and, true, most will forget as soon as they flip to the next page, but if I affect even one person, that is enough. Even one person tips the balance in the favor of good.'

'There are more ways to affect someone that with a story,' Helen smiles. 'Perhaps this is a chance to do just that.'

'Perhaps.' Maddy leans against a tree and Helen follows suit. 'But who am I kidding? This is hardly—'

'That's what you get when you leave two women on their own,' a gruff voice interrupts them. 'A talk show on enemy ground, huh.'

Maddy spins around, delighted against her own will. 'You are okay!'

'Ja, ja. Better than ever. Let's get a move on, a'right?' And without waiting, he walks past them. Maddy doesn't miss the bloodstain on his side.

She catches up to him. 'What happened?'

Archer pauses and gives her a hard look. 'Is that really what you want to be thinking about?'

He walks off before Maddy can respond.

'How kind of you to worry about my delicate emotional state!' She calls after him mockingly.

/

The constant chatter of the women behind him is why Archer fails to discern the first telltale signs of company. Or that is what he tells himself, unwilling to own up to his exhaustion. It is the sound of gunshots ahead, much too close for comfort, which brings him to a sudden halt. He hears them, then, as the women fall dead silent, loud and unruly. He hears them, only a matter of yards away, like he should have heard a long time ago.

He scans their surroundings, searching for a place to hide, seeing nothing. Their only option is to bolt in the opposite direction and hope to cover enough distance in enough time.

'Come on,' he whispers fiercely, furious at both of them, standing rooted to the spot, eyes wide. Maddy is the first to react. She grabs Helen by the elbow and propels them towards Archer, away from the oncoming voices, deeper into the brush. He lets them pass and follows suit, dropping the gun into his hands, his finger caressing the trigger when a whiplash branch catches the sling and jerks the gun and the trigger hits his finger and every chance of getting away explodes from the muzzle and sinks into the dirt in the form of a bullet.

'Run!' he shouts at them, but it is a pointless command. He knows. And he knows none of this would be happening if he'd have left without a lagging tail.

'Drop the gun.'

Archer turns to Maddy. She's scrambling in her bag, pulling out her camera, rooting through her notebook. Her eyes fly up to him. 'Drop the gun.'

He hesitates for just a fraction of a second.

'Drop the gun, or we don't stand a fighting chance, Archer.'

And he lets the gun slip from his fingers. It thuds to the ground just as a mass of oddly dressed, heavily armed dark-skinned youth bursts from the foliage, machine-gun muzzles aimed out.

They waste no time in surrounding the trio and Archer figures the only reason they haven't fired is curiosity.

'_Tri_ white _mohnki_ in Africa!' A scornful voice. Archer turns to the speaker, a young man in combat gear.

'We are journalists.' Maddy speaks boldly, and the way she flashes her press card is almost challenging, as though she is daring anyone to dispute her words.

'Journalists!' He laughs. 'Journalists! Interviewing trees, _yeh_? Gonna scare _dehm_ into talkin' _wit_ this?' He kicks the machine-gun at Archer's feet and laughs again.

Everyone laughs with him. Archer narrows his eyes, but Maddy gives him a sharp jab as she steps ahead.

'We are journalists,' she insists. 'We saw a helicopter go down and rushed there, but our guide was shot and we were just making our way back to the car when we had the fortune of running into you. I am with 'Vital Affairs'', she continues, then quickly gestures at Helen. '_We_ are. Covering the other side of this war.' She pauses, looks around slyly. 'The _untold_ story.'

The man in combat gear inspects her carefully and turns to his companions. '_Wetin go wi du wit dehm wetmen?_'

The men and boys rile up, waving their guns and shouting over each other. Maddy backs up and bumps into Archer. She turns her head to him. He breathes out, blowing her hair away.

'What are they saying?'

'Debating whether to shoot us now or save us for target practice.'

'Not funny,' she whispers.

'You did good,' he says quietly. 'But they're gonna want our car, huh.'

Maddy turns further over her shoulder. She opens her mouth to speak, just as the group falls silent. The young man makes his way to the front again.

'I am Foday Kallay and _dehm_ the West Side Boys. _Yu_ _wit_ us now.'

For the first time, uncertainty laces Maddy's voice. 'What do you mean..?'

'_Yu_ want our story, _yu_ got it. We take _wetman_ guide to _yu motoca_, he goes to _dohkta_ and _yu kom_ _wit_ us.'

Archer notes the subtle shift in Maddy's posture, the slight drop to her shoulders and the inconspicuous bow of her head, and before the defeat settling in her body ruins her hard work, he pushes past her.

'_O.K., i noh bad plan_.' He pulls out a few cigarettes, puts one in his mouth and holds the other out to Kallay. '_Sigreht_?'

He shoots a glance at Maddy and catches her staring at him – at his side. She averts her eyes with a guilty expression. Looking where she had, he inspects the bloodstain slowly spreading on his shirt. Thinks he does not feel as bad as it looks.

He doesn't feel as bad as he looks. That is always an advantage.

/

Maddy and Helen are soon enveloped by the marching rebels and Archer vanishes from their sight. They are headed in the direction of their nonexistent car, the location of which Archer had described in the most unperturbed manner.

They had only been walking for a quarter of an hour, but there is only so long a search like this can go on. Maddy fears their time will soon expire. She wracks her brain for the next move, but the only recurring thought is the desperate glimmer of denial after any calamity: this can all be undone if only.

But this is no place to be desperate. Her eyes roam the rebels for Archer and finally she sees him, lumbering along a few yards away, his gait awkward and weary. Excusing herself from Helen, she quickly catches up.

'Are you all right?'

Archer shrugs as his eyes dart warily around. 'Listen,' he says under his breath, 'this won't go on forever, huh.'

'What do we do?'

'You do nothing.' He pauses, breathing heavily. 'Don't forget I'm your guide, a'right? Without me you don't know your left from right, much less where we're going.'

She tries to make sense of his statement, feeling a catch somewhere.

'Ja, Maddy?' He prods when she doesn't answer.

'Why would we be…without you?' She asks slowly. 'If you do something stupid and get shot, do you realize—'

'Quiet,' he hisses. 'Jesus Christ. You do your part and I'll do mine.'

'If you don't tell—' She is cut-off by the sudden intrusion of Kallay draping his arms over their shoulders.

'Tell?' He cocks his head to one side, then the other. 'Tell _wetin_?

'Tell you,' Maddy answers before she even invents her lie. Her heart skips a beat as her mind races. 'Tell you that we need to stop to rest.' She nods her head at Archer. 'He is not feeling so well.'

'I'm fine, huh,' Archer responds irately, but his shortness of breath is evident.

'_Aw fon du_,' Kallay grins coldly. '_Wi_ rest at the _motoca_.'

He shows no intention of leaving. Unable to bear his company, Maddy returns to Helen and continues watching Archer with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Gradually, he falls behind them and the next time she turns to look at him, he has become the center of attention.

Coughs wrack his body and he sways precariously as all eyes land on him. He staggers a few steps and drops to his knees, still coughing violently. For a split second, his eyes bore deep into Maddy's. He shakes his head in an almost unperceivable manner. At that moment another attack overtakes him and blood spills from his mouth, spraying in heavy drops with every cough, staining his lips a gory red, running down his chin and dripping on his shirt.

'_Mekes_!' One of the rebels pokes him with the muzzle of his gun, but instead, Archer crumples to the ground.

Maddy can only stare in horror as the rebels surround him, prodding him with their guns. When that yields no results, they administer a few kicks for good measure, but their only reward is a single bubble of blood that slowly swells on Archer's lips. Then he is still.

Finally recovering her senses, Maddy attempts to run to him, but Helen grips her wrist in an iron hold. 'Oh dear,' she says softly. 'You cannot help him now.'

One of the rebels aims his gun at Archer's head, but Foday Kallay lays his hand on the stock and pushes it down. He kicks Archer and his body lolls limply.

'_De de bohdi_,' Kallay speaks. '_Wi noh_ waste _O.K. faya_.'

When Maddy at last shakes loose of Helen and throws herself at Archer, her way is blocked by Kallay. He grasps her by the shoulders and despite her struggling, drags her away. '_Wi_ rest at the _motoca, yeh_?

And they march on.

/

Glossary:

_Tri - _three

_Mohnki – _monkeys

_Dehm – _them

_Wit_ - with

_Wetin go wi du wit dehm wetmen? – _what will we do with these white-men?

_Yu_ – you

_Motoca – _car

_Dohkta_ – doctor

_Kom_ - come

_O.K., i noh bad plan – _good, sounds like a plan

_Sigreht – _cigarette

_Wetin – _what

_Aw fon du – _what can one do?

_Mekes! – _move!

_De de bohdi – _a dead body

_O.K. faya – _good ammunition


	6. How to Wear a Face

The chaos of pounding footsteps, frantic shouts and tortured howls, guns firing, bodies writhing in agony fades to a dull throb in the back of Maddy's head and her fingers move inside her knapsack as though on their own until she is clutching her camera, crouched behind a motionless body, click-click-clicking as life and death paint the scenery.

Someone stumbles over her and her camera falls from her hands, breaking the safety barrier between her and harsh reality. She scrambles for it, feeling acutely (and irrationally) conspicuous, but as her fingers close over the objective, she realizes that the worst of the battle has passed.

Slowly, she comes to her feet, a lot less sure of herself when her camera hangs uselessly from around her neck and her eyes see the world without the arbitration of a glass box. Even though caught unprepared, the West Side Boys outnumbered their attackers, winning by sheer body volume if nothing else. The few remaining enemy are disarmed and brutally restrained, hands tied behind backs. From their tight black tanks, camouflage pants and jackets, and military haircuts, Maddy recognizes them as the men she had been running from, before falling into the arms of the West Side Boys. Hard to tell which of the two are worse, she muses, inspecting the thinly pressed lips and mean, narrow eyes that depreciate any and all facial features, leaving those men unnaturally indistinguishable, each face the same mask of anger, each face – it suddenly strikes her – the same as Archer's. She wonders if it's something they learn in the army, how to wear a face.

'Where is he?' A growl – and instantly Maddy recognizes the speaker.

Cordell. She freezes in surprise as his dark eyes bore into her.

'The motherfu—' he is cut off by the butt of a gun striking him across the mouth.

'Quiet!' Foday finally makes himself obvious, just as Maddy stutters, catching her response to Cordell before it rolls off her tongue. '_Dehm_ dogs don't have _noh_ voices .' Then he turns to her. 'And neither do women.'

Women. Maddy spins around, her eyes searching wildly.

'Helen?' She utters, a bubble of panic swelling in her chest. 'Helen,' she calls, louder, not seeing her among the standing.

'_Noh fityai mi!_' Foday bellows, firing in the air.

All eyes fall on him. All eyes, that is, but Maddy's, for what she sees bursts the bubble of panic and it spills out of her in the form of a strangled cry.

A shoe, and a shapely calf, a leg, a gray head, facedown and unmoving.

Maddy's attempt to dash for the body is roughly intercepted and her hands twisted behind her back.

'_Yu tu drai yai_,' Foday says in a sing-song voice, approaching her. 'Too Western. When _a_. _Se_. Quiet.' He punctuates each word with a backhand slap, '_A _mean. Quiet.'

Maddy scrunches her eyes in an attempt to contain the welling tears. Helen's foot swims in her field of vision, so she dips her head. She does not miss the satisfaction this gives Foday – thinking her humbled, but it is neither the time nor the place to speak her mind.

'Forgive me,' she whispers, already calculating her next move.

/

To Cordell's credit, he barely gives a start when Archer falls into place beside him. He blinks twice in disbelief and faces straight ahead once more.

'If you're so keen on dying, you could have let me do the honors,' he says softly, his eyes scouting the closest guard.

'Don't worry, _bru_,' Archer's voice is barely above a whisper, but a note of cheerfulness shines through. He always did love the thrill of not being caught – and the bigger the risk, the better. 'There is plenty of time, still.'

'We're dead men walking. Tomorrow we reach camp and that's the end of the time.'

'TIA, huh? Anything could happen.'

Cordell falls silent, perhaps to consider the likelihood of 'anything' happening. Both men carefully choose their footing in the sheer blackness that is night in a jungle. The light of a few torches is immediately sucked into the vacuum of the night, and contrary to their purpose, they only make the dark darker.

'Marching on through the night, huh.' Archer gives a short, dry laugh. 'Either those two know each other or they ought to meet.'

'Cotzee isn't meeting anyone this side of the world.' Cordell states curtly.

'Oh, come off it, _bru_. You've been holding yer breath for how long now, waiting to come into his little business. It's almost like I did you a favor, huh.'

'Yeah. Put three bullets in my chest while you were at it.'

'_Ja, ja_, it was either you or me and you don't look any worse for the wear. Good stuff, those army vests.'

'What the hell do you want, Danny?'

Archer shoots him a sly look. 'I like what I do, huh? And I'm damn good at it. Save for a rare misfortune, I put half of Sierra Leone's diamonds on the market. You want to keep that business going, you're gonna need me, _bru_. You can give orders, a'right, but I know how to _talk _to people. So call your hounds off and—'

'Talk us out of this and we'll see. And I mean,' Cordell pauses emphatically, '_all_ of us.'

The need for a cigarette makes Archer's fingers twitch. He curls and uncurls his index finger, then unwraps a piece of gum found in a dead man's pocket. The uniform is just a bit too small for him; it constricts his movements like a shroud of anxiety that can't be shaken off. He resists the urge to tug at his collar. 'That can be complicated.'

'I don't need a man who can't do what I ask of him on my service.'

A good hour passes before Archer speaks again. 'You'll be sewing the Colonel badge on your sash by this time the next day, a'right?'

With that, he vanishes into the darkness,

/

When the procession stops for a brief respite, Maddy collapses on the ground with no intention of ever getting up. Every muscle in her body aches and her head is pounding. She tries to gather enough saliva to lick her lips, but all the water has been wrung dry from her exhausted body. All she manages to do is rest her elbows on her knees and hang her head.

'Tupac _se_, be good to our women. He _se_, do bad and it come back to _yu_. But _a _believe_ a _do good because _yu tu drai yai, ja_? Too bold. You be good to me, I be good to you, understand?'

Maddy lifts her head at the sound of Foday's voice, but his words don't register.

'Tupac?' She says dully. Her tongue sticks to the roof of her mouth and the word comes out slurred. She shakes her head. 'Yes. Yes, I understand.'

But Tupac? Even her brain has dried out, she feels, and shriveled to the size of a walnut. Desperately, she wants to make a connection with this man who holds her life in his hands. It should not be hard, given his youth and inexperience with all matters other than violence, but she simply cannot gather the energy required to think.

Foday hands her a half full canteen and Maddy gulps with immense gratitude – only until the fluid hits the back of her throat and she coughs it back up, spitting and spluttering, almost retching at the strong, bitter taste.

'_Mampana_', he laughs and snatches the canteen away.

'You take his words seriously?' She says, still spluttering, before he leaves.

'He say it ain't a crime to fight for what's mine. _Dehm _jungle, _dehm_ country – is mine.' Foday taps his chest passionately then sweeps his arm at the WSB. '_Mi _and _mi_ people's. Tupac were alive – he would be here now, standing _wit_ his brothas, guiding _wi_.'

'You don't think that his sword was a pen?'

Foday only looks at her blankly. '_A_ think _wetin_?'

'Perhaps he fought with his words; he fought by writing to inspire others like _you_ to right the wrongs of your people.'

'_Ja_,' Foday catches onto that thought. '_Ja_, right all wrong and make way for better life.' He takes a deep swallow of palm wine and looks around himself with what could almost be taken for misery. 'Life is hell here. It ain't our fault – _wi_ didn't make it. _Wi_ try to _fix_ it.'

This young man, drowning in a closed circle of misery, evokes a deep sense of pity in her. Maddy fights to regain her balance before toppling from a cliff of inner conflict.

'You do as well as anyone, with what you have,' she says.

Foday gulps down more of his _mampana_, shrugs, and stands up. '_Wi_ move in five.'

Maddy leans against a tree trunk and stares ahead vacantly. All the torches stand in the middle of the small clearing, their fire flickering with soft light, not enough to give things their true color, but just enough to make out general shapes, delicate and ethereal. She blinks – and keeps her eyes closed.

'Looks like he fancies you, huh.' Archer's voice. She longs to plunge into that dream, away from the scary prospects of morning.

'Fuckin' bastard,' Archer speaks again and she almost smiles, but something touches her face and she startles awake. Or perhaps not, as Archer looms over her, his palm rough against her cheek. She feels her heart catch at the intimacy of his concerned face only a breath away from hers.

Then his thumb runs over her swollen lip and every wisp of dreaminess vanishes.

'Ow.' She swats his hand away. Tries to look at him angrily, but all she feels is the throbbing in her head. 'I thought –' she says, runs her tongue over her lips again. 'Weren't you dead?'

He grins at her with childlike glee and pulls his lower lip down with his pinkie to reveal a long gash. 'Bit through my lip. Clever, huh?'

Maddy manages a smile. 'Good for you, Archer.'

'Listen, Maddy,' he says. She lifts her eyes to his wearily. That's how he always starts before blowing her mind with a ridiculous request.

'No,' she shakes her head. 'No, no, no.' Her tongue is dry and itchy.

'All I was gonna say is you look like you need a drink.'

She looks at him suspiciously.

'Of water, a'right?' And like a miracle worker, he produces a canteen of stale, warm water that tastes a bit like plastic and a bit like something dead, but mostly, like heaven.

She gulps it down, all of it, every last drop, and only as she wipes a tiny stream from the corner of her mouth, does her altruism return and she looks away guiltily when handing the empty canteen back. 'I hope that wasn't all you had…'

'Now, listen to me, Maddy,' he whispers urgently. 'You'll be back on your feet in a few and you need to understand this. You have to get Kallay to trade Cordell and his men with the E.O. for whatever goods he's lacking. Whatever most outrageous request he's got, as long as he agrees to a trade, yeah?' He pauses as though considering something. 'And make sure you're on the same truck because that'll be your only chance to get out of this fuckin' jungle, a'right?'

'Where does that leave you?'

But Foday calls the end of the break and as Maddy struggles to her feet, Archer steals back into the darkness.

'You play Kallay and I play Cordell and we'll share the dirty details over a toast back on the base, yeah, Maddy?' He whispers urgently and disappears.

_Wait_, she wants to say. _Don't leave me here alone_.

/

As a truck with three of the six captive mercenaries pulls away in the late afternoon, Maddy feels all her hopes shatter and fall about her feet.

'—why _a _can't let _dehm_ all go, _yu_ see? Now _dehm_ have to stay true to their word and—' Foday goes on, explaining his logic but Maddy isn't listening. She searches the edge of the stark campground, where tents and shacks give way to trees and bush, hoping for a glimpse of Archer, despite knowing he's not there. What now?

The camp is a vile place. Although during the march Foday managed to maintain some sort of order, now is a different story. Of the four hundred men (and men is a term of grave inaccuracy for most of those 'men' are between the ages of twelve and sixteen) who live on camp, all are in different states of inebriation, constantly drinking and hollering, rolling in the dirt, smoking and shooting up, blasting different rap songs from different tape recorders, to form a cacophony of complete and utter chaos. And the presence of a woman does not go unnoticed by them. Since arriving on the camp early that morning, Maddy has managed to stay close to Foday, her only protection – and poor protection, at that. She suspects he's only keeping a level head until the trade goes one way or another, after which, no doubt, he will join his comrades. Even now he carries around his canteen of palm wine, unaware of the growing alarm with which Maddy counts his refills.

Involuntarily, Maddy shudders. She has to leave while she still can. She should have been on that damn truck. But Foday drags her around camp, bragging about everything while she duteously takes notes and asks according questions.

Every now and then, she shoots a glance at the three remaining mercenaries, tied to a pole in the center of the camp. Cordell is one of them, and that, she fears, is not favorable for the trade. The day bores on, hot and unrelenting on her tired body. And still she follows Foday, mostly for lack of other choices, even as his speech grows slurred and her initial pity for him turns to repugnance.

He lays an arm on her shoulders, forcing her against his sweat-soaked shirt, and when he speaks, she swallows hard, to keep down the bile that rises with every whiff of stale alcohol. But still, she smiles and does not resist.

And the day bores on.

/

There is no doubt in Archer's mind that all hell will break loose as soon as the trade falls through – and he _knows_ it will the moment he sees Cordell is not in the truck. Not wasting time following the truck any further, he turns back and focuses his attention on the camp. Four hundred intoxicated little monsters, guns at ready, so eager to shoot and so far gone, it is not uncommon for them to riddle one another with bullets.

In the light of day, and in his state, infiltrating the camp is impossible. He stays in the bush while pacing the edge, once almost tripping over an unconscious body – which he efficiently relieves of weapons and a small canteen of palm wine, until he settles on the shortest path to the captives.

Then, he lights a cigarette, takes a nice, long swallow from the stolen canteen, and waits. Every so often he sees Maddy, looking spry as ever and completely unperturbed by the very real possibility of an early death. Truly admirable. When he catches himself searching for her as soon as she disappears from his line of sight, he cuts down a twig and preoccupies himself with whittling until the truck returns, empty of its cargo. Not long after, a small shadow slides over the campground, only once and very briefly. The camp has been spotted. Archer puts a toothpick in the corner of his mouth and checks his guns. Soon.

Uneasily, he sweeps the camp with his eyes but Maddy's nowhere to be seen. And then, with no warning and no query, all hell breaks loose.

Dodging flying shrapnel and debris, shielding his face with his forearm, Archer dashes for the center of the camp, where he falls to his knees for the brief moment it takes to cut the ropes binding Cordell, press a knife into his palm and drop a gun, and he's off again. The aerial pass is over and a terrible sort of quiet descends, save for music, which does not know the proper thing to do in such a situation and continues booming.

The shell-shocked West Side Boys stare in a daze as Archer runs past them, keeping his head high and his eyes wide open. He must get to Maddy before the mercenaries sweep in for their own, annihilating everything in their path. But as though to punish him for refusing to look at her earlier, she is nowhere to be seen.

'Come on,' he says under his breath, just as the first bullet whines past. He doubles over and tries to keep going until the pain in his side becomes intolerable. Unacceptable.

Leaning heavily against a shack, Archer peeks around, to see the West Side Boys finally coming to arms: a little too late, a little too sluggish. Of course, they never expected to be blown out of their safe haven. Just like he never expected to—and there he stops, for to start with that would be, perhaps, to go back twenty years ago, to the very beginning of the unexpected. With a grunt, he tears himself away from the temporary shelter and rushes ahead.

She has to be _somewhere_. Somewhere with Foday, and Foday—

Foday would go for his insurance. Archer spins around, back to the center of the camp, where the captives were and are not any longer. And right there with his back to that pole, holding Maddy as a shield, stands Foday, daring the E.O. to get him.

Archer pauses but for a second, until his brain processes the image and the adrenalin kicks in. Then he is off again, rounding up on them from behind. If the E.O. get to her before he does, they won't think twice, he knows. What is once civilian in a war?

'Danny!' Cordell's voice cuts clear through the booming music and the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire, but Archer does not slow. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Cordell and his men, backed against a shack, facing a small army of West Side Boys.

And only Cordell has a gun.

The amount of time it takes to make a decision can be broken down into science. Sensory information hits the brain at the speed of 30 meters per second and the response fires down accordingly. So while Archer falters, it is barely a fraction of a second later that he reaches the pole, and that fraction of a second is all the time he had before being too late, because as he latches on to the muzzle of Foday's AK-47, in the same motion sending them rolling in a tangle of lims and wills and Maddy tumbling in the opposite direction, the pole explodes with the mass of bullets fired from mercenary guns.

Archer puts a few slugs in Foday and scrambles for Maddy, who follows him soundlessly, the only indication of fear being the frozen look on her face. He points her toward the jungle, only fifty yards away, and turns back for Cordell.

But as they say, you can't have your cake and eat it too, and when Archer races up to the spot, all that greets him is a mass of bodies. He pushes them away, seeing the green of the E.O. uniform, until he uncovers Cordell. With his fingers against the carotid and his eyes searching for entry wounds he misses the flutter of Cordell's eyelids until he gurgles with a laugh, blood leaking from his mouth.

'Fucked up as always, huh, Danny?' He wheezes with a big, bloody grin that twists into an unrecognizable grimace as his eyes roll back and he gives one last shudder.

Archer says nothing. For what is there to say, in the face of truth.

Glossary:

_Dehm_ – they, them  
_Noh – _no  
_Noh fityai mi – _don't disrespect me  
_Yu tu drai yai_ – you are too bold  
_A_ – I  
_Se_ – say, said  
_Yu_ – you  
_Mampana_ – palm wine  
_Mi _– my, mine  
_Wit_ – with  
_Wi _– we  
_Wetin _– what


	7. Curious State of Limbo

Archer has never been the kind of man who needs to think ahead. He moves through life like water in a tumultuous river: spinning madly and colliding with every obstacle, but never faltering. And so, recognizing the situation as hopeless, he wastes no time backing away from Cordell.

In the process, he nearly trips over Maddy, who stands behind him so absorbed in photographing, she doesn't seem aware of the hell surrounding her. She looks at him with wide, questioning eyes as he grabs her camera-bearing arm and pulls her out of the camp, through the underbrush, and into the depth of the jungle. There, he faces her angrily.

'When I give an order, you damn well follow it, a'right?'

'I don't take orders,' she retorts. Narrows her eyes at him. 'What now?'

He clenches his jaw, not trusting himself to speak as a storm rages inside him. In the 32 Battalion, Archer had learned two things: how to follow orders and how to survive. More often than not, they weren't one and the same. To follow orders, he had first to survive, and it was something he grew exceedingly good at – surviving while doing the barest minimum of what was asked. Still, they were always there, basic guidelines giving him direction, an unwritten code propelling him forwards. Until the goddamn diamond, when everything started falling apart at the seams. Every day became a step down from yesterday, every turn – an impasse. All his life, he realizes with startling clarity, he'd been running into walls, sharp curves and difficulties, and he'd crashed into every single one. Like whitewater, bursting through the nearest downhill crevice. But now, there is no gap, no fissure in the stone walls, no chance of escape from the dead end he is facing and no one to offer a hint of direction.

'Wait until the end of the fireworks, _ja_,' he manages, indicating the camp. 'Go out with your hands in the air and they'll get you home.'

'And you?' She asks, painfully aware of how often that question arises.

'Guinea is still only a few days away, huh,' he tosses over his shoulder, walking off.

She trails behind.

'The camp.' He snaps. 'Is the other way.'

'I know,' she says lightly. 'But Guinea is only a few days away. And I've never been to Guinea.'

Archer graces her with a scathing look before turning away again. 'If you can't keep up, it's on you.'

He sets a maddening pace, at first just to spite her, and when she fails to fall behind, to keep from her the satisfaction of seeing his weariness. Soon the only thing driving him forward is anger. It pushes out the bitter disappointment, the stinging pain of failing. Failing, something else he is remarkably good at.

This anger, it is a blinding white fog that swathes his brain in cloudiness; it seeps into the subarachnoid space; it mixes with the spinal fluid and fills every fissure and every sulcus; it flows over the colliculi, the thalamus; it wraps around his optic nerves and narrows his vision; it creeps down his spinal cord and follows the nerves to every fiber of his body and tingles over every inch of his skin. It constricts his throat, speeds his heart, tightens his muscles, robs him of his senses, but gives him the strength to keep going. Ahead, into nothingness.

/

After catching a few whiplash branches just before they strike her across the face, Maddy lags a few yards behind Archer. She can only marvel at his vigor, as a few hours of the intense march are enough to tire her out. But he surges on and she duly follows.

The day melts into evening without a respite and Maddy shakes off a twinge of regret for choosing him. Perhaps she would be stretching her legs in army quarters right now. Perhaps, even, she'd be on a plane, high above this miserable country, counting away the hours to home. If she had gone back to the camp. If she had never returned at all.

She looks at Archer's back, trying to read him, wanting for anything, any sign of welcome in the rigid way he carries himself. Any sign that to him she is not just a means to a direct goal, discardable once spent. For what use could she serve now? Their transaction – long over. Her return – unasked for. Still, she was of purpose to him. But he— she suddenly thinks—he had long ceased to be useful to her. Her recent actions are not for a story, not an act of humanity, not an attempt to change the world. It is a matter of feelings. Or maybe just the illusion of such.

Maddy lifts her eyes to his back again. But nothing about him speaks out to her. She fiddles with the knobs of her camera, which always calms her anxiety. For it is not immediate danger that makes her anxious; rather, the fear of being expendable.

Lost in her thoughts, she stumbles over something and, after a few running leaps to keep her balance, runs into Archer. She throws out her hand just before crashing into him full-force. He spins on her like an animal brought in from the wild: not people trained and vicious when feeling threatened. His breath is ragged. Sweat drips from his brow, trickles down his temples.

For a moment, their eyes meet, but almost instantly, he looks away. As though looking at her is unbearable.

'I—' she stutters, pulling away her hand. 'I—'

'You _what_?' he snaps. 'You want to go back, _ja_? Be my fuckin' guest.'

And he makes to turn away, but not before she grabs his upper arm. 'Why are you so angry at me?'

She sees the muscle in his jaw jump, but he doesn't answer. He doesn't look at her.

'What the hell, Archer? What the hell was _I_ supposed to do? Shit happens, it is _not_ my fault that shit doesn't always happen how you want it. You can't possibly blame me for – for – I don't know what! We did our best—'

'How fucking American of you,' he shouts. 'Do your fuckin' best. Who gives a shit about the results as long as you do your fucking best. You wanna know something, _ja_? 'Your best' doesn't matter in fuckin' Africa, a'right! You either _do_ or you _don't_ and when you don't, then that is something _you_ are stuck with. But you grow up in fuckin' dreamland, where 'your best' is an excuse for every single failure, _ja_. It doesn't work that way here. When you fuck up, you fuck up. End of fucking story' –here his voice cracks– 'everyone dies. And you can tell yourself you did your best but it ain't gonna make them come back to life, a'right.'

Out of breath, he falls silent and she, stunned by his outburst, cannot find her voice. They stand face to face, his eyes finally on hers, and in them, an unfathomable amount of rage. Or agony?

'So much guilt,' she hazards. 'Why?'

But already, he's back to his unreadable self and the look he gives her is full of scorn. 'Writing my biography now, huh?'

'I am not always a goddamn journalist. I am asking you as a friend,' she insists.

'I don't have any friends,' he says. So simply and honestly, that forgoing any chance to be offended, she is only struck by the desolation behind such a statement.

/

'We'll make camp here,' he says and, before she can try to snake her way inside his head once more, offers to bring food.

'I'll gather wood,' she calls out and disappears into the dusky foliage unnaturally quickly.

Archer doesn't bother chasing her to say there will be no fire while they are still relatively close to the battle scene. By now, it must be swarming with all sorts of authority.

He unsheathes his hunting knife and blends in with the trees, in search of any living creature, but apart for birds, the area seems to be deserted. No monkey for dinner. All the better. He doesn't feel starved for raw meat. Only for the chance to sink his knife into something warm and moving. Again and again. And again. He closes his eyes and leans against a tree. To find food. That is all he needs to do right now.

He returns to their 'camp' with an armful of groundnuts, cashews, and cassava. He drops them into a neat pile on the ground and bites into a cashew, letting the juices run down his chin freely. And he waits for Maddy. But she doesn't return by the time he's done eating and it crosses his mind that she could have lost her way.

Or went back.

'Good riddance,' he mutters under his breath to squash any emotion before it surfaces. Still, when she doesn't show up in the time it takes him to clear a space for sleeping, he goes looking for her. Night comes early to a jungle, and although the sky is still light, beneath all the foliage, at the meager height of a human eye, the evening slowly replaces color with shadows. Archer moves with typical silence, stalking rather than searching.

He finds her leaning leaning against a gnarly tree, so still that he nearly walks past her. Her face is turned up to the sky, her hand pressed against her mouth. He looks up to see what she's watching, but detects nothing of interest. Keeping himself out of her sight, he moves a little closer. And instantly regrets it. She's crying.

He cannot see the tears, but they are there, in her ungraceful sniffle, in her shaky sigh, in the way she roughly rubs her knuckles under her eyes – as though to punish them for leaking. For a minute he's torn by the urge to approach. But what would he do; what could he say? He looks at her until he's convinced that leaving her be is the only option.

Carefully, soundlessly, he backs away.

Once back at the camp, Archer finds himself at a loss of things to do. He paces to and fro. He cuts down a pile of palm fronds and loosely weaves them, as a spread to lie on. He cleans his knife. He cleans his gun. He gingerly peels back the bandages and inspects his wound in the vanishing light. Anything, but to stop and think.

Until he runs out of things to do, until his body protests against the exertion and the lack of rest over the past few days and he more crumples than sits on the trunk of a palm that, against every law of nature, chose to grow horizontally. Only the crown reaches for the sky.

Immediately, the chaos in his head flourishes. He closes his eyes and he clenches his fists and he dives headfirst into the mess of his life, searching for the one thing he can't find – an answer. The thoughts and passions come with such speed and intensity that they rob him of every shred of rationality. Like the eye of a hurricane, he is the nothing around which everything whirls.

He does not notice Maddy approaching until her feet stop right in front of his eyes. But he does not lift his head. There is nothing to say.

She falters, then comes closer. For a moment, everything hangs in a curious state of limbo. Everything stops, even his breath, even the world. And then all at once, her fingers brush over his head, his breath escapes in a rush, the world lurches forward and, helplessly, hopefully, with undeniable need, he slumps forward until his head falls against the flat of her stomach. Fatigue rolls over him, cuffing his wrists in iron shackles. The fundamental need to seek comfort defeats his habituation and every chance of rebuffing her is gone. Her fingers move hesitantly at first, then with growing certainty. They bury into his hair and dance over his scalp; they caress and stroke, radiating the long-forgotten warmth of closeness, massaging away the tension, and silencing the lambs.

An unfamiliar feeling rises in his throat – his heart, struggling to climb out into her hands.


	8. Such a Strange Creature

'Take off your shoes,' he mumbles, effectively breaking their strange embrace as Maddy backs away to inspect her shoes.

'…What?'

'Your shoes. Take them off before going to sleep, _ja_?'

Her _shoes_?

He sighs patiently. 'It's damp here, Maddy. You don't want to be getting trench foot.'

A little bewildered by the sudden change of atmosphere, she flops down beside him. Their bodies are barely inches apart, but the silence that only minutes ago bound them together is now awkward and heavy.

The inability to think of something to say is new to Maddy. Even as a young girl, she knew when to speak and when to stay silent – and when it was time to speak, she always said just the right thing. But to know it is time to speak and have nothing to say? Quietly, she lifts her foot on her knee and begins unlacing her shoe.

In a way, she understands. Not him per se, but where he's coming from. She's seen it before. The need to stay in control, the inability to show weakness, the rare bursts of irrepressible emotion. And then everything in between – a state of flippancy as though no one hurts him, nothing could be sad.

'I'll take first watch,' he says. 'You go sleep, _ja_, Maddy?'

Exhaustion makes her attempt to argue halfhearted at best, and soon she is lying in a bed of palm leaves, bare feet and all. As she drifts off to sleep, she focuses on the tiny red ember of a cigarette floating where Archer paces.

She wakes to a graying sky with the startling realization that she must have slept through her watch. Or, more specifically, she was never woken for it. Archer sits stoically, with his gun on his knees and his eyes wide open.

'Get up,' she demands annoyed. 'My turn.'

He looks at her with a small smirk despite the weariness around his eyes. 'Do you even know how to use a gun?'

'You point and shoot,' she snaps, sweeping the gun from his knees.

And in the wee hours of the morning, he sleeps.

/

A torrential downpour jolts Archer awake, rinsing away every trace of sleep before he's sitting up. Immediately he scrambles for the gun which Maddy tosses recklessly. The water roaring over leaves and pounding the ground drowns her shout. She leaps under a patch of open sky and dances in the rain. She spins around and around, catching raindrops in her open mouth, like a child at the end of the yearly draught. But unboundedly more attractive, he observes, spellbound by her joy.

The shower is gone as suddenly as it appeared, leaving everything drenched. The ground turns to mud under their feet and water pools in the huge leaves of a philodendron. Archer shakes off like a dog and grabs their empty canteens.

Maddy is still beaming, shaking out her dripping hair and peeling off her soaked clothes. She wrings her shirt and her pants. Her scantily clad body gleams in the flickering sunshine and when she begins toweling her hair with her shirt, Archer forces himself to turn away. The attraction to her is an ache in his loins, a tightness in his chest, the lightness of his head.

But he does not sleep with women he knows. Or rather, he doesn't know the women he sleeps with. In fact, he doesn't sleep with women. He never takes them home and he never stays the night, and he never remembers their names. In and out and adieu, that is his strategy, one that came from the army and one that applies to anything. But there she is now, a woman who caresses his hair and dances in the rain. And he doesn't know how not to want her.

The rest of the day is uneventful, for they walk fast and talk little, resting just so long as to catch their breaths. As evening falls, they break free from the jungle into a savannah. Maddy gasps and he spins around, gun at ready. But no one is holding her hostage.

'Look,' she says softly, reaching out for him so her fingertips touch his arm.

'_Ja, ja_,' he shrugs, 'National Geographic material.'

'Shut up,' she says. 'And _look_.'

So he tries to look as she does, tries to find the magic in the vast rolling grass of the savannah, to marvel at the isolated trees with sloping branches that hold up clouds of leaves, to be lost in the pink horizon, astounded by the distant shapes of long necks swaying toward the sunset. But he is unimpressed and aware that disappoints her.

'This country,' she speaks, her words full of passion, 'it can be heartbreaking, it can be _ugly_. I have nowhere else seen so much ugliness all at once. But then, stepping out of the jungle, it becomes so clear – it's not the place, it's the _people_. Hateful, vile, brimming with malice. And maybe God washes his hands of them, I don't know. Maybe He turns a blind eye and lets them find their own way back. But He never _left_, don't you see? He's right here, in places like this, and it's up to us to reach out to Him.'

Something catches in his throat. It irritates him, _she _irritates him. He frowns and doesn't reply.

'I grew up in New York,' she says. 'Our jungle was the City and Central Park was like a zoo you went to see trees. The only wild animals I saw were squirrels. But to grow up here, one with nature… You must have loved it when you were a child.'

'When I was a child,' he repeats blankly, as if those words hold no meaning to him. 'When I was a child.' He rolls the phrase off his tongue, tasting it. '_Ja. Ja_, I loved everything when I was a child.'

'But not anymore?'

'What is there to love,' he says flatly. She looks at him with sad eyes and he's drawn to fall into the warmth they offer.

/

The sun dips below the horizon, leaving in its tow a sea of purple hues. Mist slowly creeps across the savannah, softly at first and then as a thick white cloak that gathers at their knees and puts them in a land of clouds.

If she could, she would take the feelings bursting from her and plant them in his heart like flags, fill his heart with hers, cup it in her palms and breathe all the love for the world into it. But as it is, she cannot tell him what to love.

_Love me_, she could say. _Love me and I'll show you what there is to love_.

'Will we stop here for the night?' she asks instead.

He nods his head at the jungle. 'In there.'

Soon they have a small fire and not long after that, Archer brings back a small skinned creature to roast. Maddy isn't picky about food, but she prefers it without head and legs attached. She eyes the thing curiously.

'Hope it isn't endangered.'

Archer shrugs. 'Sure isn't anymore, huh.'

While waiting for it to cook, she sits opposite him and watches his hands: strong and lean, reliable. She wonders if they move with the same ease when he's killing a man. Pleasing a woman. With the same synchronized ripple of the muscles as they flow one into another, smoothly, precisely, turning the wrist, pulling the tendons, rousing his fingers into action.

He turns the pike with the animal one way or another. Their silence doesn't seem to concern him. Yet there are still so many things Maddy wants to ask. And she tries, but he isn't interested.

The creature sizzles and starts producing a heavenly smell, especially to someone who's been living on weird African apples and water.

'So—'

'So, how about you stop asking questions, _ja_, Maddy?' His tone is testy.

'I was only going to ask when we can eat,' she replies, hurt.

Archer gives a sigh. She wraps her arms around her knees and rests her chin on them.

'I'll tell you a campfire story, a'right,' he offers in conciliation a few minutes later. He lifts his eyes to her, but she cannot read them through the fire dancing in them.

'You can even take notes, _ja_,' he coaxes. 'A real Rhodesian folk tale. No place else you are gonna hear one.'

He tosses his cigarette into the fire and begins.

'Once there was a young boy who lived in a village of Rhodesia. He lived with his mum and dad, whom he loved very much. But his aunt, she also lived with them and she just seemed to live to order him around. She was mean and angry and all she did was nag. Nag nag nag. The boy, he got very tired of this, _ja_?

'He dreamed of going to the _dawa mtu_, the medicine man, _ja_, and asking him for some kind of potion that might shut her up. But he didn't do this because he was a good boy and his parents had taught him well. 'Besides,' his dad would say, 'yelling at you keeps her out of my hair!' So the boy put up with it.

'Until one day, she asked him to do something he really didn't want to do, _ja_. She wanted him to go deep in the jungle and pick some fruit. The boy was no coward, but he'd heard that in this part of the forest there were caves. And it was said that in one of these caves there lived _Ajabu Kiumbe_' – here he pauses, searching for the right words – 'a Strange Creature. It had a big mouth and a big belly and liked to eat human flesh. The boy told his parents he didn't want to be eaten by the Strange Creature. The aunt didn't believe him of course, but his dad said they shall go all together and see about it. And pick that fruit while they're at it, _ja_?

'Next morning, they all went to the caves, even the aunt. She didn't think there was a Strange Creature, _ja_, but she wasn't gonna miss a chance to give him a good yelling. So there they were, outside those caves picking that fruit; only the aunt wasn't. She was devouring it, stuffing her greedy mouth, seeds and rinds flying everywhere. And only the boy was listening, paying attention to every rustle in the bush, because no one else _really_ believed there was a Strange Creature living in the caves. And suddenly, there it was, the Strange Creature. It leapt out from behind some bushes, right in front of his mum and dad. With its drooling toothy mouth and a big shaking belly. It grabbed the boy's dad and swallowed him whole. His mum tried to run, but it caught her and swallowed her whole. The aunt hadn't even noticed, she was so busy with the fruit. The Strange Creature crept up behind her, and swallowed her, too. Then it turned at the boy who stood in fright the whole time. It sniffed the boy with a hungry grin, so that every hair on his body rose up. And, oh, it had awful breath. So awful, that every time it roared, trees caught on fire. The boy turned and ran so fast he would've left a leopard in the dust, huh. But even though he was running faster than he'd ever run in his life, and even though the Strange Creature was really, really big, it was catching up. It was still hungry and the boy was going to be its dessert.'

Archer turns the pike thoughtfully. The flames leap and waver, casting eerie shadows on his face.

'And that… is how it ends?' Maddy asks tentatively when he doesn't resume the tale.

For a moment, he looks like he doesn't know what she's talking about. Like someone rising from a heavy dream, he blinks at her with confusion. Then he shakes his head.

'No. No, Maddy, even in Rhodesia stories for kids had happy endings, _ja_?' He laughs dryly. 'Those only went to hell along with the country, huh.'

'And so,' he goes on, lifting the pike off the fire and dividing the meat between them, 'with the creature at his heels, and the whole forest behind him on fire, the boy, having nowhere to go, climbed the top of a high rock. There he remembered his drum. He always carried his drum, to signal for help if he found himself in danger. So he started beating a rhythm, something along the lines of 'Help! There's a Strange Creature trying to eat me up!' That's a loose translation of drum language, but you get my drift. As the boy continued beating the drum, the strangest thing happened – the creature started dancing. It danced and danced, its belly bouncing up and down, and the faster the beat, the faster the creature bounced. If you were ever in a situation where you've just swallowed three people and then went dancing, you'd know the next thing that happens, _ja_? The Strange Creature got sick and threw up his dad and then his mum. They were both just fine but very slimy. The boy wanted to play more slowly so the creature wouldn't burp anymore, but his dad told him that he was a good boy and good boys don't let Strange Creatures eat their aunts. So he kept up the beat of the drum until out came the aunt.

'The creature kept dancing until the sun went down and then he danced on back to his cave. Finally the boy climbed down from the rock and another strange thing happened, this time with the aunt. She wasn't yelling anymore – something about seeing the inside of the Strange Creature had mellowed her out and she never yelled at the boy again.

'And,' he smiles bitterly, 'they all lived happily ever after.'

Maddy pulls a piece of meat off the bones and chews it slowly, dragging out time. She cannot tell if it's the food or the story that leaves such a bad taste in her mouth. He does not even understand, she thinks, how desperately he wants to be heard.

'I think the moral here is not only to be brave, but to remain virtuous, and things have a way of turning out right,' she says at last.

Archer tosses a bone into the embers of the fire. 'With that keen sense of observation, no wonder you're a journalist, huh?'

'And you,' she retorts, 'are just an ass.'

'Ja,' he grins. 'Not a virtuous bone in my body.'

Then, with a promise to return after a quick look around, he feeds the fire just enough to keep it barely going, and sends her off to sleep.

The fire is reduced to a few glowing embers when she opens her eyes. Archer is not there and she has a feeling he never was. With a little sigh of frustration, she sits up and rubs her eyes, drags her palms tiredly over her cheeks. _This is the last time I come to Africa_, she thinks, like she does every time she's there. She sits with her head down for a few minutes, until the exhaustion recedes and her heart stops racing.

Then, up she goes, and off to find him. Which does not take long, for he is only a few yards out into the savannah, sitting with his back against a large boulder. His face is forlorn and distant like the moon that casts everything in paleness.

/

Maddy appears from the thicket like a mirage: a moonlit fairy, drastically out of place in the wilderness. She floats through the tall grass, skimming the surface with her palms and spreading around her the air of subtle disarticulation. _That is what she does_, a little voice pipes up, _wreak havoc in your head_.

He holds his breath in apprehension when she lowers herself beside him, waiting for her voice to shatter the strange reverie. But she does not speak, instead looking up to the moon, exposing the long, smooth line of her neck and a hint of pulse at the base of her throat. He struggles against an unbearable urge to feel it throb against his lips, fill his hands with her hair, bruise her skin with his teeth. When he lets his breath out, he does so with such care it wouldn't even stir a butterfly – as though by denying his existence he could deny his desire.

They sit like so, close but in separate worlds, she staring at the sky and he stealing sidelong glances at her. Eventually, her eyes close and her chest rises and falls in a peaceful sigh. He looks at her freely then, his gaze a caress that doesn't miss any detail, until her eyelashes flutter and instantly he averts his eyes. He stretches out his legs, then crosses them Indian-style, hanging his wrists from his knees. The tips of his fingers brush warm skin, supple and soft. He savors the feeling just for a moment before shifting his hand a miniscule amount, enough to break contact.

But then, unsure like a figment of imagination, her fingers touch his; meeting no resistance, they slip into his palm and chart every line, brush over the inside of his wrist, trace his thumb, slide into the spaces between his fingers and then along them, perform a secret dance that clenches every muscle of his stomach and makes his chest hurt. Suddenly, the silence feels dangerous, choked with unspoken feelings, and he blurts the first thing that comes to his mind. Anything to keep himself from falling into her.

'Last time I sat under a rock', he says, knowing how foolish he sounds even as the words leave his mouth, 'was with Solomon.'

Her fingers freeze for a second, then caress his palm again.

'I sure hope you weren't holding hands with _him_,' she gives an amused smirk.

'I don't hold hands.'

'Yeah,' she says. 'I know. And you don't have friends. You're a sad excuse of a man, you know that?'

It is his turn to laugh and he looks at her with mock hurt. 'You are the only woman I know who tries to seduce men by insulting them.'

'That,' she snorts, 'is because the only women you know are the kind you pay first.'

'_Ja, ja_' he says, aware he's balancing on a dangerous edge but unwilling to stop, 'but when I bed them I don't call them whores to their faces.'

She smiles at him insolently. 'If there was a bed here, maybe I wouldn't be calling you a whore.'

Archer lifts his eyes to hers and is captured by her pupils, deep and huge like the end of the world. They rob him of his comeback and dry his mouth. He should have pulled back only seconds before now because now is too late. Instincts override inhibitions and just like that – quickly, roughly, wildly – he draws her forward and they tumble to the ground.

/

His body explodes all over hers. She is on top of him, he on top of her; his hand is in her hair, his palm cradling her cheek; his chest heaves against her breasts, the buttons of his shirt press into her stomach; his hips thrust to hers, his knee falls between her thighs; and his fingers – everywhere, frantic like desert nomads approaching an oasis.

'The whole savannah is our bed, huh,' he growls, his breath hot on her cheek. He presses to her with force enough to crush bones; squeezes the air from her lungs and makes her arch her back – half in protest, half in want. She throws her head back, gasping for air, inviting his kiss. His thumb brushes along her jaw, down her neck, his lips hover millimeters from hers, his breath comes quick and shallow, forcing his chest tighter against hers every time he inhales as though his ultimate goal is to mold them into one. She winces at the buckle of his belt cutting into her pelvis and sinks her nails into his arm. And abruptly he pulls away. Grabs her by the elbows and drags her to her feet. His face is a mess of emotions, his eyes narrow and dark.

'Get some sleep, huh,' he snarls and walks off, leaving her dazed and confused.

She watches him go, run away with whatever monsters hound him. It is the first time she doesn't only not understand him, but doesn't _want _to understand him. After the urge to cry with frustration passes, she remembers Helen's words and wonders.

And when she falls asleep – for the body sometimes overwhelms the mind – she tosses restlessly and dreams she's dancing, dancing, dancing to the beat of invisible drums.

* * *

'The Strange Creature' is a real folktale from Zimbabwe, edited only slightly by me to suit my interests  
'No one hurts you, nothing could be sad' is a line from Alexi Murdoch's 'Song for You'  
As for the previous chapter, clearly the lambs belong to Hannibal Lecter's master Thomas Harris


	9. Dry as a Funeral Drum

Sorry for the delay, life has been _intense_. I promise to get back on this horse, though. Thank you for reading, always.

* * *

The shroud of sleep wrapped around her senses and the drums still in her ears, Maddy is abruptly pulled to her feet. Before she can tell if she's awake or dreaming, she's running, stumbling and staggering over her own feet and everything underneath them, pulled forward by Archer in the same manner as always: by the wrist, like an insubordinate child.

She cannot hear what he says over his shoulder as the drums beat louder and her confusion grows. There is something else she does not understand, a vibration that travels up her feet like a thousand pillars being pounded into the earth. Everything seems to be trembling. The icy claws of a nightmare grip her heart. She tries to articulate her thoughts, tries not to fall down, tries to understand anything besides the growing sense of foreboding.

Archer pulls her free from the jungle, and she freezes in the chilling clarity that is wakeful life.

Ahead – how many yards? at what speed? – thundering straight at the shelter of trees, straight at _them_, wide as the eye can see is a stampede of rhinos, the driving force of drums hidden behind them in a cloud of dust.

'Oh…' is all she manages. Despite the overwhelming vision, Maddy's fingers scramble for the camera – an action so fused with her existence it happens without thinking. She lives, she breathes, she photographs. But Archer sprints off, his hand still clamping hers, and the camera slips from her fingers as they race alongside the jungle, desperate to outrun the wild herd.

'A tree!' she shouts at him, 'Climb a tree!' But he shakes his head and runs even faster.

Maddy judges the dwindling distance between them and the end of their lives – who would think that rhinos can run so fast? She is tempted, by a terrible, daredevil urge, to kneel before the oncoming herd, just for a second, just for one picture. _What_ a picture it would be.

Archer takes an unexpected turn and ducks back into the jungle. She stumbles and falls to her hands and knees but he doesn't let her go and doesn't stop running, and for a few moments, she trails behind him like a dead weight. Wayward branches scratch her face, tangle and rip at her hair, the jungle floor shreds through her pants and digs into her knees, but still, he drags her onward. The vibrations of the earth grow into a dull roar.

He pulls her up behind a tree right before gunfire explodes around them. 'In the trees,' he breathes in her ear.

The animals charge past the wall of fire, barreling blindly through the jungle as death creeps into their bodies, crashing into trees and trampling everything in their path. The next few seconds are a disarray of senses: rough hide brushing her forearm, the shock to her back as something collides with the tree, the slow trickle of blood down her shin, Archer's chest heaving against hers, disaster ringing in her ears, her heart beating in her throat. And her camera, awkwardly pinched between them – the sore exhibit of incapability.

She doesn't notice the drums have stopped beating until gunfire ceases and an unnatural silence, pierced by groans and helpless kicks, descends around them.

Archer passes his hand over his face – she cannot tell if he's shaken or simply annoyed by the inconvenience. He raises a finger to his lips and quietly threads between the mutilated bodies. And it is not that she does not see him indicating for her to follow, or that she doesn't _want_ to leave the mess behind, but as her trembling hands bring the camera to eye level, she simply can't.

That is not to say she throws herself in harm's way; she does not stand like a frozen fool, a welcoming target for poacher guns. She crouches between mountains of dying flesh, slinking towards the depth of the jungle, but always keeping an angle, releasing the shutter, capturing the act of monsters. They drop down from the trees at the frontline soon enough. Monsters who look no different from ordinary men, who shout and holler and squirt tobacco juice through their teeth, monsters who slap hands and continue their jobs with no regard to their dying victims.

It is the sound of saw on bone that finally makes her depart.

/

Maddy does not speak or look at him as they walk through the jungle in a detour that eats hours of their time. She pauses when they re-enter the savannah and looks in the direction of the shooting, but there are no tell-tale signs of the slaughter that has taken place. The jungle tells no stories.

For all those times Archer has wished her silent, he wants the opposite. What must be going on in her head that robs her of righteous and passionate assertions is anybody's guess. He almost says something. Thinks better of it. After all, he never signed up for this.

Eventually she interrupts the quiet. 'What happened to the drums?'

Archer shrugs. Trying to understand her train of thought gives him a headache. He answers simply. 'Hired locals. They get paid to flush in a certain direction and go home.'

After that, she says nothing again. Her silence feels like a punishment and it angers him. And what angers him even more is that he cares one way or another.

Then they walk into a rhino. Or rather, just the lumbering gray shape in the distance, too soft around the edges to be a rock. With a quick glance at Maddy, Archer attempts to steer them away. But she has seen and understood, and she strides right over.

'They're damn angry when hurt, huh,' he calls after her, but she ignores him completely. He is forced to chase after.

The rhino that emerges from the savannah grass is bloody and riddled with bullets. Dead. Until they draw near and it raises its heavy head. The look it gives them is dim and resigned, but then the animal shakes its head with an angry snort. Its whole body shudders in an attempt to charge them, the front feet dig into the earth and it almost succeeds in rising. But its injuries are too grave and, whining pitifully, it collapses, not moving again.

Gritting his jaw, Archer drops the gun into his hands and takes aim.

'Don't shoot.'

Archer turns to Maddy. 'You've got any better ideas, huh?'

She only shakes her head.

After the echo of the shot dies down, she brushes past him and gently lays her hand on the rhino's horn. Archer looks around uneasily – the shot could easily attract unwanted visitors.

'Funny,' she says, 'that so many die for so little.'

And then she finally looks at him. Pierces him with her green eyes in such a way her words becomes an accusation.

He swallows a terse reply and looks at the far end of the savannah. 'Let's keep moving, _ja_?'

When they glance behind a good few miles later, the rhino is again just a distant shape, but now it is not alone. Slight dark figures dance around it.

Maddy squints. 'What are they…'

'They stick around after each hunt and if they're lucky a couple of the beasts die away from the rest. The horns fetch a decent price on the black market, huh.'

'And how would you know—' she shakes her head. 'Never mind that.'

She snaps a photo. 'Can you believe it? An entire breed is disappearing in the hands of its closest neighbors.'

'It's eat or be eaten, _ja_? This is their only means of survival.'

She opens her mouth in a reply he doesn't want to hear on a subject he doesn't care to pursue.

'And until you've lived like that, you have nothing to say for it, a'right?'

'Oh, and I'm sure,' she sneers, 'that smuggling diamonds leaves you with a lot to say for it.'

He doesn't bother to reply. But she goes on.

'How much better are you than the poachers back there? And you dare speak like you're one with the desperate locals. Only means of survival. What a dandy fucking excuse - life's so much easier when you're in over your head in self deception. It's people like you that _put_ them in this position.'

'Listen,' he says, his voice dangerously low, 'I don't need excuses because I don't care what the fuck you think, _ja_. I liked my job. You liked my job while you were getting a story out of it, _ja_, Maddy? But there you go with your rationalizations and justifications and whatever-fuck-else. There would be no suppliers if there were no consumers. And yet everyone else is guilty except for them, _ja_?'

'Everyone takes their turn being the perpetrator and the victim, sure, but how everyone wants that role! To point out they're the victim of a vicious circle! But do you _really_ think that smuggling is not the link that suffers the least? Most consumers are not even aware of what is happening here on ground level. There was a time that I didn't know. But I learned. And I—'

He narrows his eyes and a deep furrow appears between his brows. '_Ja, ja_. You. _You_ don't wear diamonds. _You_ don't use rhinoceros' horn powder. You care about the world. Listen to yourself, huh. What you care about the most is caring more than everyone else.'

'No matter what you think about me,' she snaps, 'I would never exploit those weaker than me.'

'You talk about self deception, _ja_, Maddy?' He takes a step closer and looms over her. 'Your clothes' – and he runs his fingers over the shoulder of her shirt – 'made in Taiwanese sweatshops. Your boots' – he kicks lightly at her foot – 'welded together by eight year old boys in India. Your precious camera,' – he tugs at the lanyard of her camera and she clasps it protectively. – 'Do you know that the parts are made in China? Maybe North Korea, huh. _Ja, ja_, fancy Japanese engineers put them together, but they are _made_ by the cheap labor of someone who will never afford to use it. You think you're so much better than me? At least I know who I am screwing.'

She backs up, her eyes brimming with anger and he gets the nagging feeling she's about to cry.

'You're really fucking something, you know that, Archer?' And without another word, she marches off.

He would pursue, but the very idea of apologizing makes him nauseous.

Her steps are quick and determined, and, not wanting her to melt into the sea of grass, he trails behind. He sets a leisurely pace, not much concerned with catching up. She'll be coming back to him as soon as darkness falls. For all the stubbornness in her, she would not risk her life to make a point. He hopes.

The sun rolls towards the horizon without Maddy so much as glancing over her shoulder. The final flares of anger ebb away while watching her uptight figure and Archer struggles for anything to keep them going. For to give into regret would be to admit he cares. And he doesn't care.

He lights a cigarette and breathes in deeply. Scans the savannah with a vacant gaze.

/

All the time while and quietly seething, Maddy doesn't lose hope Archer will try to make amends. Even if he wasn't the one to start... Maybe she shouldn't have compared him to poachers. Maybe. Maybe he shouldn't have smuggled diamonds. But that was something she knew all along, something that hadn't bother her before, like he so aptly pointed out.

What has gotten into her? She shakes her head, tears stinging her eyes. It couldn't be true that she only cared about the story. That now once the story is hers, his character flaws are losing their lure. _That would be too much like him_. And she is startled by this thought. He's right. She's been deceiving herself.

The abrupt way he left her the night before is still vivid in her mind. He couldn't have been more clear. Here she is, acting like a woman wronged, when he had never once given her reason to think he cared one way or the other. Even after he explicitly told her so.

The dull echo of a voice pierces through her thoughts and she realizes Archer's calling out. She spins around, at first missing him completely. But then, with a more careful look she discerns the vague shape he's become. He's waving his hands furiously above his head - like he is happy to see her.

'Yeah, right,' she mutters under her breath.

Something must be wrong. She scrunches up her eyes and takes a step in his direction.

That's when she hears the sound of engines. A coated army wrangler, then another, emerge from the shrubbery. She looks about frantically but it's too late to hide. The cars are rolling directly at her. Running stops being an option when machine guns appear in the windows. The only calming notion is a large logo across the side of their car: _Patrouille de frontière Guinée_.

But the men who climb out are tall, mean, and intimidating. They bark at her in heavily accented French and seize her before she has the time to comprehend.

'I didn't do anything _wrong_,' she insists trying to twist away.

They throw her in and pull off.


	10. A Saucerful of Secrets

He wakes slowly, drifting between shades of awareness hazy like a heavy fog. His mind struggles to break free of the alcohol swamp as his body makes its presence known with an unbearable ache of the bladder. The mother of all headaches cradles his head in iron claws, making the recollection of last night's events almost impossible. There was a bar, that much he remembers. And before that? Maddy and border patrol. Then he finally stumbled onto a road and some farmer picked him up. He slept all the way to town.

His mind circles back to Maddy. Where is she now? They would have taken her to immigration jail but knowing the tongue she has, she might have talked her way out and could be well on her way to anywhere by now. With a weary groan, he drags himself up and drops his head into his hands. The left side of his face is surprisingly tender. Was there a fight?

He really needs to take a leak.

'Last time I seen you on your hands and knees throwing up in an alley must have been what, ten years ago?'

A grating voice interrupts his thoughts. Archer lifts his head and stares at the speaker until his eyes focus in the dim light and he sees a filthy old man in an equally filthy corner.

'Twelve,' he mutters.

'Twelve years.' The man repeats in marvel. 'And look at you now, back in the same fucking alley, wasting my hard work.'

'Piss off, huh.' Archer walks to the toilet – except it's not there. A blackened hole gapes from the floor like a fiendish mouth. His stomach turns at the nauseating smell.

He comes out scowling. 'How much does a used toilet fetch on the market?'

The old man rubs his hands and gives a rotten, toothless smile. Everything around seems to be folding into decay.

'Sit down, boy,' he says, and Archer is swept back to the last time he obeyed those words simply because he didn't have a better idea. The man didn't yet have a lisp, or dirty gray hair, fine like spider webs.

/

_'Sit down, boy.'_

_He stands on the defensive, his arms crossed._

_'What else you got to do? Sit down, I said.'_

_When he sits, it's because he recognizes the truth in those words – there's nothing else he's got to do. The man in front of him is shabby and tired, just like the hole he lives in. Hole, for there could be no other word to describe the cramped, dirty apartment where light gains a physical body – a dusky, grainy yellowish shape that filters in through newspapered windows and hangs in uncertainty, illuminating nothing._

_'Who you running from?' The man has an annoying habit of raising his hand to his face and then quickly withdrawing it, as though suddenly conscious of the motion. He touches only the tip of his nose._

_Archer looks at him suspiciously. 'Why not who's running from me, huh?'_

_'Ay ay,' the man waves his words away. 'I'm no inquisition, yeah? You don't wanna talk, we don't got to talk.'_

_He pauses expectantly, waiting for Archer to fill in. But he says nothing._

_'All right, all right,' the man throws up his palms. Touches his nose and puts his hands on his knees. 'I know who could be interested in yer services.'_

_Archer tilts his head._

_'But he needs his men to be serious about work. No room for fuck ups in his plans. Ya follow me, boy?'_

_Suddenly, Archer feels uneasy. He stands up and walks to the door, half expecting an ambush. 'What do you know?'_

_'More than a fool like you could ever know. Sit down, I said.'_

_Archer looks at the door. Then walks back to the broken couch he had been sitting on. 'What?'_

_'Doin' what ya do in these uneasy times, yer gonna wind up dead, boy. Now, the SA Army is commissioning a special battalion—'_

_Archer leaps from his seat like stung. 'You're out of your fucking mind if you think I'm going back to army.'_

_He slams the door behind him without a second thought._

/

He sinks back into the very same couch he sat in twelve years ago. If his head wasn't splitting in two, he'd find it amusing. Same words, same couch, same hopeless situation.

'What did ya do this time?'

'I shot Cotzee.' Three words that sum everything up. Almost.

The old man laughs. The sound is sharp and uneven, like a creaky door. Abruptly, he stops. 'I take it no one else found it funny.'

Archer thinks back on the moment, running through the jungle with blood squishing in his boot and Coetzee's hounds behind him. The thought of a few million pounds in his bank account giving him the energy to keep going. But everything has its limits.

_She did, too_.

'No.' He says, tasting bile in his mouth.

'There's something yer not saying.'

Archer fights a wave of irritability. He can say as little as he wants to.

'Your wife is dead,' he says flatly. And the words feel like they should have never been uttered. In the ultrasonic moment before they reach the recipients ears, he wishes he could suck them back in.

But the old man only shrugs. 'Been dead twenty years.'

'_Ja, ja_. Now she's really dead, huh.'

In the silence that follows, he walks to the door, opens it into the bright mid-day sun and like a burned vampire, slams it shut. He finds himself in the same position as every other time here – standing by the door with his arms crossed, chockfull of unease and unable to leave.

/

'_This punk? I ask you to find me men I could trust and you bring me a kid?' His thick, South African accent creates the illusion of kindness, but the man has the polished features and hard eyes of a ruthless dictator. 'What's your name, punk?'_

_The man who touches his nose opens his mouth to interject but is waved away. He backs up and falls into shadow._

_Archer crosses his arms over his chest. His heart pounds in his throat and he finds it hard to speak. Could he have done anything stupider than meet with a military officer? But he lifts his head and looks the man squarely in the eyes. 'Archer.'_

_'Archer!' A harsh laugh. 'Look at 'im! Hasn't grown a beard yet and already he's acting like big stuff.'_

_'I didn't come here to stand around and take your shit, huh?' Archer touches the handle of the door, but the man kicks his foot up against it._

_'Kid's got spunk. I like that.' He rubs his jaw thoughtfully. 'All right, _Archer_' – here his voice takes on a twinge of scorn – 'what do your friends call you?'_

_'I don't have friends.'_

_'Good, good,' the man smiles thinly. 'That's a start. I hear you're good on the street, kid, and I'd like to help you out here, but don't make me ask you again.'_

_'Daniel,' Archer mutters._

_The man hooks his thumbs around the buckle of his belt and leans back slightly. His smiles pleasantly, but his voice leaves no room for consideration. 'Now listen here, Danny. Next time I ask you a question, you damn straight answer it. And you answer it like there's nothing else you'd rather be doing. Got that?'_

_'Yeah.'_

_'Yes, _sir_. As your commanding officer, I am sir or Colonel to you.'_

_Archer swallows a wave of rebellion. 'Yes, sir.'_

_Within a blink of eye, the colonel transforms back into a charmer. 'Well, the kid catches on fast, doesn't he?' The colonel glances at the man who touches his nose, but he hides even deeper into the shadows._

_'You're nothing but a dog now, Danny, yeah? You sleep on your toes and you can pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.' He circles around Archer like a vulture. 'Isn't that right, Danny? You strike without thinking – and that is where your problem lies.' Suddenly he changes his tone. 'What are you doing here?'_

_'Bootlegging, sir.' Among other things._

_'They pay you better for that, do they? Of course they do. You don't get paid shit in the army. That why you ran away, Danny?'_

_'No, sir.' He hesitates, but then spits it out anyway. 'I got sick of kissing fat dim-witted ass, _sir_.' He has to will himself not to flinch at the impact of his words._

_But the colonel bursts out laughing. He hangs on to the buckle of his belt and laughs and laughs. When he stops, it's like he'd never even cracked a smile. 'What did I say, kid? Think. _Think_.'_

_He tilts his head back and looks Archer once over, much like someone buying livestock. 'You get back down to South Africa and report straight to me, Danny. We'll see what we can do about your deserter's rap. Then we'll work on your style.'_

/

The old man touches his nose and then angrily whips his hand back. He struggles to stand up, but it seems he has to rock himself into motion. It takes him three attempts to succeed. His movements are oddly constricted, like the air around him is something he has to push through every step of the way. His neck hides between his shoulders and his back is hunched. When he struggles to move a stack of papers off a desk, Archer notices his shaking hands. _When did he get so old?_

'How d'ya know?' His voice is low, almost tender.

'Not many white women live in a jungle waiting for their husbands to return.'

'All these years…' The old man shuffles the papers. Some of them flutter to the floor and lie scattered about his feet. 'I kept meaning t'go back.'

He falls into a chair and struggles to control his trembling hands enough to open a drawer. 'Ay, ay, I would imagine it, going back. She would be…'

He drifts away into his thoughts, slips into that sacred corner of his mind where his wife meets him joyously after years of exile. Lightly, he brushes the tip of his nose and shakes his head.

'How could I explain t'her I loved her so much I couldn't stand being around her? She made me want t'be better than myself and the harder I tried, the clearer I saw how short I was falling. I could never be enough for her. Constant tension t' live with that – waiting for the moment she'd realize it – realize what a fool in love she was bein' and hang me out to dry.'

Archer stands stiffly behind him, thoroughly uncomfortable and with nothing to say.

'That day I left…' the old man continues, 'I had every intention of comin' back. But as the distance between us grew, the tension melted away and suddenly – suddenly – I was free. Light as a bird. I could do anything, you see? _Everything. _Without the constant fear of her judgment – judgment that never came, but alas! And I failed her – in the biggest way I could've ever imagined – but it was not enough for her t'realize, yeah? All these years, she waited.'

He sits quietly, pondering the meaning of his own words. Then he raises his head and gazes at Archer with astonishment. 'She must've loved me. Ha! She must've loved me.'

Consolatory words do not exist in Archer's vocabulary and more than anything he wants to leave. _She would know what to say_. He shakes his head angrily, as if that could dislodge her from his mind. Eventually, he lays a hand on the old man's shoulder and together they stare at the yellowing photo in his trembling fingers: a blissful young couple standing on the edge of the jungle.

'The worst kind of fool is the kind that thinks he knows everything, boy.'

/

_'There may be children there. If armed, they're to be liquidated. The primary object remains locating and liberating the POWs.' Those are their instructions and they are nothing new. Lately, children are always there and they're always armed. At first, shooting them was a force of will – to fire upon a child, even one with a gun, is a nerve-wracking act. But in matter of life or death, there is only one choice, a choice that soon becomes a habit and every child becomes a foe._

_Archer and Cordell leave their men to wait and move ahead, two experienced scouts that make no sound and leave no trail. As they close in on the village, they separate in opposite directions, each carefully scanning and committing to memory the relief of the land. The village is suspiciously lax in guard, with only one armed man sitting in the outskirts, smoking. Behind his back, a few women are hanging their wash. There's no sign of a hidden army. No clear sight of POWs, but then, one wouldn't expect them to be out and about._

_'Something isn't right.' Archer states plainly when they are once more crouching together._

_Cordell pulls out a GPS and inspects the coordinates. 'It's the right place.'_

_They look at each other, faces grim._

_'It's a trap.'_

_Archer presses his lips together in concentration. 'No, _bru_, there's nothing about it that smells like a trap, huh.'_

_'That's _why_ it's a fuckin' trap, I'm telling you.' Cordell shifts his feet. 'They'll be expecting us come nightfall. If we move now, surprise is in our favor.'_

'Ja, ja_,' Archer waves his words away indifferently. He inspects the coordinates again. 'We should wait. Keep an eye on them for a while.'_

_'Our orders were—'_

_'I know what our fucking orders were, huh? But now we're here and the situation is different and we fucking wait and see.'_

_They return to camp at odds._

_Cordell goes straight for the sat phone. 'We let the colonel decide.'_

_'The colonel isn't here, huh, _bru_?'_

_'The fuck has gotten into you? We are given orders and sent here to complete them and if you suddenly don't feel like it, let the colonel refresh your memory.'_

_Archer snatches the phone out of Cordell's hand. He punches in the buttons, pierces Cordell with a harsh glare and tosses the phone down without ever dialing. 'Let's go.'_

_Within minutes, the men surge ahead, brushing noiselessly through the jungle until they stand at the edge of the village. Archer looks at Cordell dismally. He merely nods his head._

_Then Archer gives the signal, and they burst into the village with open fire. The few women drop like flies, but there are no children. There is no resistance. With their guns at ready and their nerves on high, the men start raiding the huts, kicking open doors and pulling out the occupants._

_Archer walks along the line of kneeling villagers and stops in front of a young man. He squats in front of him and puts the muzzle of the gun under his chin. '_Na weh dem prizna_?'_

_A woman bursts into hysteric sobs. The man shakes his head wildly, the whites of his eyes flashing. '_No prizna_!'_

_'Ehnti? Don't fuckin' lie to me,' Archer snarls, digging the muzzle deep into the man's jaw._

_Still, the man shakes his head. Tears roll down his cheeks. '_No prizna na ya_!'_

_A thud followed by sudden silence makes them turn. A woman lies awkwardly bent, her legs under her body, blood pooling around her neck. Someone stifles a cry. No one else makes a sound. Cordell brushes past Archer, pushing him away._

_'You're turning soft, _bru_,' he hisses in Archer's ear and points the still bloody knife at the man's eye._

_'_Na weh dem prizna_?' He speaks to everyone in the line, but even while visibly trembling, they keep shaking their heads._

_Archer catches movement at the edge of the village and he squints in that direction. Then everything happens simultaneously: the women start screaming, the soldiers lunge for their guns and the men lunge for the soldiers, gunfire explodes in every direction, up and down, into bodies and at the jungle and blood colors the earth red and Archer roars for cease of fire. But in fact, his order comes too late, for there is no one else left to be shot and the guns dwindle to a natural stop. Apprehensively, the soldiers approach the jungle._

_Sprawled between the trees, armed with sticks and stones, lie the children. Archer takes one brief look and heads back to the village without a word._

_He begins the systematic, meticulous job of searching every hut and the perimeter of the village for the prisoners, for anything to justify this massacre. Soon everyone else joins and they leave no stone unturned. But they find no prisoners. And by the time they gather around at the center of the village, another thing they can't seem to find is Cordell. Archer lights a cigarette. His eyes run over the hanging wash, then he spreads out a terrain map and inspects it carefully. Perhaps Cordell saw something worth checking out in the area. The only thing that catches his attention is a river._

_Just a short ways down a well trodden path, he discover a sandy riverbank, beyond which water flows smooth and tranquil like quicksilver in the evening light. Scattered along the shore lie large sifts, some still with gravel in them. That explains the missing children._

_Cordell is preoccupied with one of the sifts on the far right. Archer drops to one knee and runs the gravel through his fingers. He has to go through several handfuls until he finds what he's looking for. A diamond. He rises and shakes off a shudder of disgust._

_Finally aware of his presence, Cordell approaches. He takes out a cigarette and offers one to Archer. After they both light up, Cordell gives a grisly smile. 'We're rich, _bru_.'_

_Archer rolls the diamond between his thumb and forefinger. His whole body is a tingling wreck of nerves, but when he discreetly inspects his hands, they're steady as ever._

_He hardens his heart and puts the diamond in his pocket._

_Cordell grinds the butt of the cigarette into the ground and digs into the remaining sifts. When Archer remains standing, he waves his hand in invitation. 'Come on! Won't make them any deader if we get something out of it.'_

_Archer watches the embers of his cigarette creeping up to his skin. Then he shifts his eyes to Cordell running gravel through his fingers. And all he feels is calm. A terrible, chilling kind of calm. 'You fucking dirtbag. You knew.'_

_'Look here, Danny – ' Cordell stops at the look on his face and some detached part of Archer marvels at being able to strike fear into such a man by simply looking at him. But the rest of him seethes – at nothing other than his own gullibility._

_/_

Again Archer walks to the door. Turns around and walks back. Catches sight of a moving figure and drops down, presses his back flat against piles of boxes. Immediately, his eyes search the assorted junk for a weapon. The old man peers at him curiously. It takes him a few seconds to realize he and the old man are the only two people present and he'd taken offence with his own reflection.

Agitated. That's how he feels. Like he's losing control. He lights a cigarette and takes a few deep breaths before looking in the mirror. The man in front of him seems foreign – thinner, his face lined with exhaustion. His cheeks are sunken in and his eye purple – _so there has been a fight_. He leans in closer to inspect it. The reflection moves too, but maybe it is his changed face, or maybe it is the fly tracks on the dirty mirror, but suddenly _that _man becomes a different entity. _That_ man, who looks gaunt and disheveled. _That_ man, who got drunk and had a bar fight, _that _man, who got screwed, shot, side-tracked. _That_ man, who has no idea what the hell he's supposed to be doing.

He stares into the dirty reflection until the misery in that face becomes comical, and then he laughs at the man in the mirror and the man laughs with him.

When he finally looks away, his head hurts even more than earlier. He focuses on the old man brushing his nose with a trembling finger. 'What the hell is wrong with you?'

The old man shrugs without engaging him. Archer paces around the room a few more times, but with his chance at distraction gone, he is forced into full awareness, and it is an awareness that presents itself with nausea not unlike the one from his hangover. _She is gone_.

_She is gone_.

And he should be relieved; he should be pleased, he should be glad to be rid of her. But unless this relief presents itself with like an overwhelming sickness of the stomach, he does not feel it. All this time, he has wanted her gone. She was a threat to _everything_, his job, his poise, his sanity and in the end, she took them all.

His mouth is dry and he desperately wants a good swig of palm wine. He tries to untangle his thoughts and group them together because everything all at once is too much to fathom. But again he fails and it's yet another irritation. He has never had trouble dealing with complicated situations. And then she came along and left a muddle in his mind.

At last he gives up.

'I don't know what to do.' He is surprised at how raw his voice sounds and he drags his hands over his face, as if that could help contain his emotions.

'Fix yer life boy, that's what you got to do.'

Archer blows his breath out in a sound of annoyance. '_Ja_, that's very helpful.'

'It will be when you finally _listen_.'

/

_When he opens his eyes, he can't seem to recognize his surroundings. A terrible hangover is splitting his head in two. He squeezes his eyes shut, but when he opens them again, everything is still unfamiliar. Instinctively he reaches for his knife, but it's not there. He scrambles up, kicking over a box and spilling its contents. A maimed doll's head rolls away, bounces against another box, a foot, the leg of a chair—_

_A foot. He raises his eyes to the face it belongs to just as his fingers brush against the cold metal of his knife. In a different pocket. He looks at the man staring at him and slowly pieces together the night before. The botched job, which has started becoming the rule rather than the exception, the bar where he came to drown his frustrations. The man he did it with._

_Maybe he had said something he shouldn't have. Maybe this man was hired by the people who had hired him. He tightens his grip on the knife._

_'You got to fix yer life boy,' the man says and Archer looks around himself derisively._

_'Look who's talking, huh.'_

_But the man lets his words slide. 'If you got to get out of here, I know some people who –'_

_'I don't need any favors, ja?' Archer blows his hair out of his eyes. It's been a while since he's gotten around to cutting it._

_But still, the man keeps talking. 'The word on the street is you do dirty things, boy. And you don't always do them right.' Archer presses his thumb against the blade of his knife, its sharpness soothes him. 'Word is, some people are not very happy with you.'_

_'Shit doesn't always go as planned,' Archer sneers, judging the distance between them. If the man has a gun, his knife won't serve its purpose. But if he wanted Archer dead, he had plenty other chances for it._

_'Listen to what I'm saying, boy. Yer in a mess and I can help ya out.' The man touches his nose and puts his hand in his pocket._

'Ja, ja_, unless you got a job for me, I don't need your fuckin' help.' When he walks past the man, every muscle in his body is taut and ready. But nothing happens. He sheathes his knife only after closing the door behind him._

/

_'It's not always me, huh? We got disbanded,' Archer answers the usual question before kicking some junk off a couch and falling into it._

_The man scratches the tip of his nose. He guzzles palm wine straight from the bottle and hands it to Archer. For a while, neither man says anything. Archer knows last night's marks on his face are being scrutinized and he feels compelled to turn away._

_'You didn't take it well.'_

_'None of us did.' He puts his hand in his pocket and rolls a diamond between his thumb and forefinger. The same one that cost a village._

_'There's still time, boy.'_

_Archer looks at him questioningly._

_'To change yer life around.'_

'Ja._ That's what I'm thinking.' He pulls the diamond out into the open, but in the gloom it looks just like any stone._

_The man extends his hand and Archer drops it in his palm._

_'You will be running them here?'_

_'Here and there, _ja_.'_

_The man returns the diamond with utmost care, like it was something very delicate. Or exceedingly awful. 'The world has a way of collecting its dues, boy.'_

_Archer furrows his brows. 'It did that in advance, huh. Now I'm collecting mine.'_

/

Unconsciously, Archer puts his hand in his pocket – but nothing is there. It's like he's moving backwards and the only thing left is to go back out for hire. To fall off the grid for a few years and see where he winds up.

The old man clears his throat. 'Ay ay. You got some terrible idea in yer head now, boy, I can tell.'

'Ja, ja, unless you got better ones. I need a job in these parts. If you've got ties to the poachers—'

'_Look at me_!' The old man spreads his fingers and laughs dryly. 'Do I look like someone who could hold on to ties even if he had 'em?'

But Archer doesn't look at him.

'Look at me, boy.' He waits for Archers eyes to land on him before continuing. 'You like this sight, yeah? That's you in a coupla years. When I met ya – twelve years ago, yeah? – I thought, this boy's gonna go far, but what d'you do, Danny, huh? You fuck things up.'

Archer opens his mouth in a hostile retort, but the old man holds his hand up.

'You don't like the truth, yeah? No one does. I didn't. You fuck things up, boy. Maybe ya don't mean to, maybe ya don't get it, but no one else does it for ya. _You_ fuck them up. Every time ya got a chance to fix things better, ya find a way to back yourself into a corner – and then ya think the world's not fair to you, yeah, boy? _You_ ain't fair to yourself. And by the time ya realize the only thing keeping life shit for ya was you, you'll be just another old man, all alone and dying of cancer. Ya got to do things _right_, boy. While you still got time.'

Spent, the old man slowly leans back in his chair. Archer finds his stiff movements oddly inadequate to the passion in his words and the anger he feels is dashed with pity.

Quietly, he walks to the door. He shields his eyes with his arm and leaves.

* * *

_Na weh dem prizna_? – Where are the prisoners?

_Ehnti_? – Is that so?

_No prizna na ya_ – No prisoners here.

A large part of this chapter (for ex. Coetzee's and Archer's exchange) is based on Pink Floyd's song 'Dogs', sometimes verbatim.

'A Saucerful of Secrets' is the title of a Pink Floyd's album and song.


	11. And a Very Good Criminal

_Apologies, apologies. I'm not dead yet, and neither is this story. Hope you're all still here and hope you enjoy. _

* * *

The train of thought that leads Archer to the local police station isn't for just anyone to follow. The sequence of connections he makes is based on a thoroughly flawed logic, but somehow he arrives at a human conclusion – help the one who's helped him.

And so, he kicks the dirt a few times – almost indecisively; how uncharacteristic – before taking those few steps into a weary building with a lopsided '_Police_' sign above the entrance.

Only to find out if she's there. Only to know she's unhurt. Maybe to bail her out, but never, no, not at all to _see_ her. It was a foolish run, stupid decisions from the very moment he approached her – the world, it isn't it always falling apart? She was fascinating, in her own, annoying way. She was useful. Then… Then she started getting under his skin. Whether that was a good thing is up for deliberation, but now he must do what is in their best interest. Allow them to part ways.

With this in mind, he slaps a few notes on the front desk. But the sentry merely shakes his head. Archer stifles a curse and leans over the counter. 'Maddy Bowen,' he drags out each syllable, forming them carefully with his lips.

And still, no luck. With growing frustration, he jerks the registry book to face him and thumbs the list of names. No, no Bowen yesterday, no Bowen today. Not a few days back, even. Unless… Unless she gave a fictional name – and why would she not? After all, she had a knack for making his life harder.

So he describes her, rolling his tongue awkwardly, remembering long unused French adjectives – _femme insoumise, exaspérante, intense_ – all accurate but unsuitable. He sighs in annoyance and employs his hands: this tall, that thin. Hair down to here. White.

But no. She has not gone out. She was not brought in. And then he loses his cool, grabs the sentry by his shirtfront and snarls at him.

Not a good idea. Or maybe so. It is hard to tell the effect he wanted from his stony face, but the one he gets is of a quick arrest and even quicker deposit in the holding cell. Expertly, efficiently, he surveys his surroundings and identifies his cell mates. No women and no smugglers, only miserable faces and unfortunate souls, all of seemingly little use. But there is nothing Archer wouldn't manage to squeeze some use from.

Not everyone makes their way to the holding cell, he finds out. Some shifts, some patrols… People disappear around them.

Related to _le braconnieres_?

His informers clam up. Yes.

Archer waits patiently to be bailed out. He settles in the corner with his arms over his knees and closes his eyes. A little extra sleep never hurt.

/

Once back on the street, he walks the town, picks up his gun from where he hid it earlier and finds a room to rent out for a few nights. Small, dirty, smothering hot and right above a seedy bar, it is perfect. The sun shining through the patchy roof and stained walls with peeling paint are reminders of the rainy season, but today is a good day. Archer slips the gun under the bed and goes out into the courtyard to shower. Solar powered heater, how eco-friendly, he smirks to himself at the cask of water hanging above the showerhead. Then it crosses his mind that it's something Maddy might say and his smirk vanishes. There is no peace of mind from that woman. The water is cool and he lifts his face up to wash away thoughts of her. As it streams over his eyelids, into his open mouth, rushes past his ears enveloping him in soft white noise, his headache recedes slightly.

He shakes his whole body to dry himself and steals back upstairs. Time to produce a diamond, one of the few still lingering from his glory days. He palpates his scalp lightly, feeling for a foreign object behind his ear until his fingers hit a small bump and then, with a flick of his knife, brings the diamond out. There's hardly any blood.

/

When evening comes, Archer goes back to the police station. The shift has changed and he's nonchalant and smooth, spreading the cash around until he has the list of boarder patrolmen's names and shifts for that month. From here it is only a matter of finding out where they live.

Four names are of interest and he arranges them in alphabetical order. He considers returning for his gun, but decides against it. A knife will do. He's seen Maddy pass herself off as a journalist enough times to imitate and a gun would only cast doubts. Not to even mention that he's not eager to start up a new war with the prior one still on his heels.

He smiles rather pleasantly – bruised eye and all – when _Monsieur _Ehate opens the door.

'_Excusez-moi, peut-être vous pouvez aider_,' he says smoothly, hating every ass-kissing word of it, '_Je suis avec le magazine Vital Affairs.' _He spreads his hands earnestly and goes on to explain _la situation_, his colleague who vanished a few days ago while crossing into Guinea, where could he enquire about her? Would Michel be willing to help him for a monetary reward?

The mention of money perks the man up and he seems eager to start looking, but there is nothing about him that says he might be clever enough to lie. Archer twirls his knife behind his back and grips the blade tightly. The tap to the base of the skull with which he renders the patrolman unconscious is almost gentle. He leaves Michel tied to the bed as a precautionary measure.

It is getting dark outside when he finds himself on the doorstep of _Monsieur _Munoz. The patrolman is rather unhappy about the disruption of his dinner and returns to the kitchen, Archer right behind him. The litany is the same, and so is the response that follows. Archer dumps Braulio by the bed and glances around for something to tie him up with.

And then – and he shudders to think how close he was to missing it – he sees the camera. Maddy's camera. Tossed carelessly on an armchair behind a coffee table, the strap hanging over the edge, it looks like any other camera of the same brand – and upon closer inspection there is nothing particularly discerning about it, no sticker, no initials etched into a corner, and even the film is missing, but he knows. He picks it up and weighs it in his hands and remembers the way it pressed against his ribcage only days before and he knows, he knows this is it.

He sits down in the chair and puts the camera on the table. With one eye on the unconscious body, he uses the tip of his blade to pick dirt from underneath his fingernails, ignoring the disgusting feeling of dread that passes through his body every time he looks at the camera. He waits as Braulio twitches, opens his eyes. Blinks, focuses on the intruders and then scrambles – for what, will never be known; like an angry feline, Archer snags him by the back of his neck and drags him across the room. His fingers dig into the man's neck mercilessly, making him wail in agony.

'Shut. Up.' Archer snarls and throws him into a chair, almost upsetting it.

'Don't move.' There goes his knife again. The patrolman freezes in terror.

'The woman,' he spits out, 'where is she?'

But Braulio shakes his head. '_Je ne sais, je ne sais_, what woman? I never saw no woman.'

'Don't' and the back of his hand impacts with the side of Braulio_'s_ head, 'lie to me, huh?'

Braulio swears and grovels - the camera? he bought it last night at the market, honest – but nothing convinces a man to be honest like a demonstration of knife-wielding skills. And Archer had learned a lot during his time as a mercenary.

'_Aie pitié_! It was not me, _s'il vous plait_, stop. There was, there was a woman, _oui, oui_, just the other day, she saw…what is not for the eyes of civilians, oh, especially not _journalistes_.' The man clutches his bleeding hand and blubbers on, while Archer stares at him coldly. 'We did what we had to, you must understand, I did not want to' he shrinks behind the cover of his raised arms, 'but it is not I who gives the orders, I only follow, _s'il vous plait_, do not hurt me,' and he cowers pitifully.

Archer inspects his knife while getting a grip on himself. He has willed the desperation from his voice when he asks, quiet and cold as ice, 'what did you do to her?'

But the man's resources are limited. '_Je ne sais_, none of us do, we always hand them over to someone – we don't even know his name! –and that is all. _S'il vous plait_, we don't do anything wrong.'

'Oui, oui, they disappear and no more trouble for you, huh?'

Braulio says nothing. In a sudden flash of rage, Archer kicks the chair over and he falls to the floor.

'I asked you a question, huh?' He grabs the patrolman in a chokehold and drags him up until his feet kick at the air futilely. '_What _does he do to them?'

'_Je ne sais, je ne sais! _Our job is just to guard the territory…' the man gasps for air.

Archer releases him abruptly and he crumples to the floor.

'How do you reach him?'

When he has his answer, he takes care not to leave a witness. And the camera, he takes it with him.

/

With the vague feeling that he's getting in over his head, he dials the unfamiliar number.

'Oui,' a voice rasps on the other end. It is hard to sound brute and inelegant when speaking French, but this man easily manages.

'I've got someone to take care of,' Archer mimics his harsh tone. 'Don't make me wait.' And he slams the phone down.

Then he pays a visit to Michel, who's bucking like an angry snake, but still firmly fastened to the bed. He fixes Archer with a wide stare when he slams the door shut. Rightful indignation twists his face and he lets loose with a stream of expletives so imaginative even Shakespeare would be surprised.

Archer furrows his brows and that, with the added visual of his bloody knife, is enough to shut Michel up.

'Just so there's no temptation, huh?' Archer pats him on the shoulder after stuffing a gag in his mouth. Then he ties the man's hands behind his back and drags him out into the street. With a glance in either direction, he approaches a beat up Wrangler, knocks out a side window and throws the patrolman in the back. It takes him but a few moments to hotwire the car and head out of town.

The captive exchange happens much like Braulio had described. A nondescript jeep pulls up at the location and a heavy man with a flashlight climbs out. The flashlight dances briefly over Michel's face who mmmphs and rolls his eyes emphatically.

'He's become a liability,' Archer gives him a solid kick in the ribs before any questions arise. The man only nods and opens the back of his vehicle. Archer doesn't miss the bars separating the back from the driver's seat or the AK-47 riding shot-gun. He throws Michel in headfirst.

After the jeep pulls away, Archer waits a few minutes, then turns off his headlights and follows suit.

The nameless man heads back to town, drives through a muddy road along the slums, turns into a wide street, and appears to drive straight into a building. Archer gets out of his car at a distance. He approaches on foot, studying the building as it expands in front of him. It is at least twenty five feet tall and runs along the whole block, each corner marked by a turret, beneath one of which is a gated entrance in. What gives the building away almost immediately is the solid metal gate and bars running along windows, all of which are set more than fifteen feet from the ground. The façade is faded yellow, decorated only by dirty streaks from the corroding metal. The turrets are brightly lit, with lights sweeping the perimeter periodically. Archer keeps well back. There is no one around for him to direct his rage at and he realizes he's squeezing the blade of his knife hard enough for it to dig into his own flesh.

'Fuck,' he hisses under his breath. Kicks the wall and looks at the prison again. 'Fuck.'

How clever, to lock everyone who is inconvenient in a prison with no rights and no lawyers, no phone calls and no letters. There is no body to turn up unexpectedly – and bodies have a tendency to turn up, especially when the output is high – and create problems, no trail of evidence, no one to complain as the only complainer is safely cut off from the world. Perfect vanishing act.

TIA.

Archer drives his Wrangler to the place he stole it from and walks back to his room. The image of Maddy in that filthy, wretched, cramped and cruel hole, where rats run rampant and food comes seasoned with maggots , where one is lucky to conquer a bug infested clump of hay to sleep on and where bodies lay unburied for days, until their stomachs bloat and faces turn blue, makes him sick.

So sick, in fact, he is tempted to call up a journalist – any journalist in the area; even if they don't watch each other's backs, aren't they all out for a story? – and wash his hands of this matter. They'll write their stories, work their magic, create an international scandal and have her sprung. It will do. And he'll have done his part.

He closes his eyes, but sleep does not come. Delusional, that's what he is. No one will just up and spring her – not for years, in the best case. The bureaucratic walls that will come up, the fake charges that will pile on – no government is willing to appear weak and corrupted under public scrutiny. If that woman is in prison, she damn well deserves to be. Time will pass, people will forget, bigger tragedies will happen. No one will get her out.

With an angry sigh, he gets up and walks outside. The sky is paling but the streets are still cast in darkness and he easily melts into the night.

So much for not starting a war.

* * *

_femme insoumise, exaspérante, intense – _insubordinate, infuriating, intense woman

_le braconnieres_ – poachers

_Excusez-moi, peut-être vous pouvez aider_. _Je suis avec le magazine Vital Affairs_ - Excuse me, maybe you can help. I am with Vital Affairs magazine.

_Je ne sais_ - I don't know

_Aie pitié – _have mercy

_S'il vous plait- _ please

_Oui -_yes

He was handsome and a very good criminal – 'Candy Went Missing (White Rabbit's Funeral)', _Candy_ (2006).


End file.
